Gods' Playground
by Jonque
Summary: Legendsverse DCLM376, Gods' Playground. Takes place after FLAS and Wings. After and during a hiatus, chapter seven uploaded.
1. False Alarms, The Bane of My Existance

I suppose I should go on and put the legal crap up here. Yes, that's right folks, welcome to the disclaimer. I disclaim any and all ownership of all original-to-series-continuity Titans characters, events, etc. The other original-as-in-someone-else-thought-them-up-but-it-wasn't-me characters belong to their respective owners and are used with approval...I think. LM said it was ok, so that's good enough for me. Legend Maker owns Noel Collins/Savior, Bobcat owns Robert Candide/Gauntlet and Pangloss, and Jedi-And is the person behind Scalpel and Sophie. I own only some of the ideas to this fic and only my own original character, Kate Rivers. This is set after Wings, Cutting Edge, well after Epic, and a good while after Lights and Sounds. Now, I've wasted enough time on this farce of a legal disclaimer. On with the show. ..Wait! Before that, I'd like to thank the above mentioned for allowing me to actually write this monstrosity and helping. Now it can start. Almost jinxed the whole thing...

**Gods' Playground**

01 – False Alarms are the Bane of my Existence

Off the coastline of Jump City, on a small island populated by a giant steel-and-glass 'T' full of metahumans and a couple of aliens, it was just another day. Outside the tower, Tim Drake, better known as Robin, and the team's newest member—Scalpel, also known as Nigel Hastings—passed the time doing something useful: sharpening their skills through training. Farther inside the building, Gar Logan and Vic Stone—Beast Boy and Cyborg respectively—were engaged in something similar, though this could hardly be called training.

"Dude! You're button mashing!" Garfield yelled, nearly throwing his controller at the Gamestation in frustration—this was his third loss in as many minutes.

Beside him, Victor grinned. "Awe yeah, I win again! And we both know Noel's the only button masher here."

A few feet behind them, the kitchen was occupied by two of the resident females: Kory Anders and Tara Markov—Starfire and Terra—were sharing a bucket of ice cream over a game of cards, which Kory seemed to be winning. A good distance and a floor or so away, Raven and Noel—a.k.a. Savior—were spending some much needed quality time together, meditating.

That leaves us only Robert Candide—Gauntlet—unaccounted for. His current whereabouts: the shower...singing in the shower, no less—and badly at that. We'll spare the reader's eyes and ears with a conveniently timed alarm. Wait, let's stick around a second...

Loudly attempting to sing a rousing chorus of Henry VIII, Rob was cut off mid-word by the alarms. Groaning, he put down the soap and cut off the water before turning and opening the shower stall. Too bad he didn't notice the bar of soap falling from its place and then sliding across the shower's floor tiles, before it came to a stop directly under his foot as it came down. The reaction was instant: his left leg slid forward into an insanely deep split before the unfortunate teen finally fell over to the side, groaning now for a different reason. Now we can go.

In that special room where the Titans gathered to be briefed for nearly every emergency (unless they weren't actually in the Tower when it happened), the team stood around a large video screen. Glancing around, Robin noticed they were missing some members. "Where are—" he started, but was cut off by Raven and Savior literally stepping out of the shadows of one corner of the room. "Never mind. Where's Rob?"

Noel shrugged. "Beats me. Haven't seen him all day."

"Ok, we'll go on without him—"

"Wait for me!" the boy in question yelled, limping into the briefing room. His pants and shirt had been thrown on quickly, as evidenced by the fact that the shirt was on backwards and he was currently holding the pants together with one hand while carrying his socks and boots in the other.

"Man, what happened to you?" Gar asked, noting the limp.

Hopping around on one foot, Rob attempted to get a sock on. His pants slipped halfway down his thighs before he decided that it'd be better to fix those first. "Don't ask."

Robin coughed, drawing everyone's attention back to the screen. "Now that we're all here, let's see what we've got," he said, pressing a button on the remote that controlled the surveillance system erected throughout the city.

Onscreen, a giant blob monster was currently wrecking parts of downtown. A boot flew past Robin's head and smashed into the screen, but not with enough force to break it.

"I nearly cracked my balls open on the shower floor for Mortimer?!" Rob yelled, drawing a wince from the male half of the room.

"If that is Mortimer, does that mean we are getting a new member?" Kory asked, looking around the room.

Tossing Gauntlet his dropped boot, Tim shook his head. "No Star, not that I know of. Unless someone other than Legend Maker is currently writing this and knows something we don't."

After a short pause, Cyborg spoke up. "No yelling about abusing the fourth wall," he noted, glancing towards the ceiling. "Maybe she didn't notice."

Shaking his head, Rob managed to get into his other boot. "No, I don't think it's her. I've been the center of attention too long and she hasn't had Noel talk to himself or preach at me for thirty or more lines yet." He grinned, but was stopped a moment later by a thwack! to the back of his head, courtesy of Raven. "Oww. And whoever it is, they're abusive."

"You had that one coming Rob," Tara laughed, though she had to admit that he was right.

An explosion from the screen drew their attention back to the fact that Mortimer was still rampaging about the city. "One of these days, we're going to have to see about teaching the police how to deal with this guy," Gar commented, his sentiments echoed by the entire team.

"You know the drill. Titans, go!" Robin yelled as the team dashed from the room. By default, he got to fly with Starfire. Raven, Beast Boy, and Terra flew ahead of them while Cyborg, Savior, Scalpel and Gauntlet made their way downstairs where the T-car was waiting.

The flying Titans, along with Robin, were the first ones on the scene. They surveyed the damage below once they touched down on the roof of one of the taller buildings. "Ok, the police have evacuated most of the civilians. Terra and Raven, I want the two of you to round up anyone they missed and then convince the police to leave as well."

The two assigned girls gave their affirmatives before taking off below. Pulling out his communicator, Robin punched in the code for the T-Car. "Cy, how far out are you four?"

"Just three of us Rob, Gauntlet jumped out a few streets back after saying something about a fuel truck. And we're right behind you," Cyborg answered, parking the T-Car behind the building Robin was currently standing on. Shutting the car off, he stepped out along with Savior and Scalpel. "Man I hope that thing doesn't get on my baby."

Pulling out his own communicator, Savior contacted Robin again. "So what's the plan?" he asked as the three of them made their way around the building at ground level. "Same thing as always?"

"Find a way to separate it and burn whatever's left," Robin confirmed. "Gauntlet said he found a fuel truck?"

Savior winced. "Yeah. Stroke of luck, we drove past one on the way in. Though knowing Gauntlet, it could be bad luck."

Above the white-clad teen, their leader grinned. "We'll see when he gets back with that truck. Until then, we're going to distract it. Have Scalpel hang back for now and keep an eye out for Gauntlet unless he sees an opening. Robin out."

Putting away his communicator, Savior glanced towards Scalpel. "I suppose you heard that, huh?"

Grinning, the alien in question straightened his hat. "Big ears do come in handy. Try not to save any for me."

"Man, you're the lucky one. That thing makes a damn mess wherever it goes. It took the better part of a week to clean its crap out of my systems the last time we fought it," Cyborg groaned, hoping beyond hope that it didn't get anywhere near the T-Car. 'And I just waxed it this morning.'

Spotting a nearby car, Savior snapped out the Shimmer and wrapped it around the car's midsection. "Ready, Cy?"

"Awe yeah, let's rock and roll," he grinned, arming his sonic cannon. A second later, Noel braced himself and threw the car—luckily, it was something akin to a Volkswagen in size, as opposed to the SUVs soccer moms favor (sure, he could have handled that too, but smaller cars were just easier and faster to pitch around). When the car got close enough to Mortimer, Cyborg fired off his sonic cannon, propelling the vehicle into the sludge monster's midsection. "STAR!"

Above them, Starfire had already charged a massive starbolt, which she loosed into the car's underbelly with a yell, followed immediately by a pair of explosive discs thrown by Robin as he swung down towards ground level on his grapple line. The resulting explosions managed to separate Mortimer from a good chunk of his body mass, giving Robin time to land with a roll. He almost lost his footing however when the ground beneath them began to shake.

Turning, Cyborg saw Terra—eyes and body surrounded by a vivid yellow glow—summoning two large chunks of asphalt. "Someone call my name?" she asked, directing the rocks to either side of Mortimer. She was getting ready to smash them together when they were surrounded by a black aura. Realizing what Raven had in mind, Terra threw as much of her power as she dared into accelerating the two slabs of rock towards each other.

"Let's not give this thing a chance to attack, if we can help it," said the goth in question, really not wanting to ruin another costume with this thing's sludge.

Cyborg, who had started running towards Robin the moment he spotted Terra and Raven, began priming his sonic cannon for another blast. "Robin!" he yelled, catching their leader's attention.

Robin grinned, pulling out another pair of explosive discs. "Sonic boom!"

Cyborg fired off his sonic cannon, catching Robin's explosive discs much the same way as with the small car from earlier. The explosives struck Mortimer at the same moment as Raven and Terra's combined rock smash, splattering half of what was left across a city block.

Above, Beast Boy watched the action for a few moments before turning into a swift and making a dive for the ground. Just as he would have hit, he pulled up and shifted forms again to that of a pterodactyl, wrapping his talons around Cyborg's shoulders and using the extra momentum gained from his dive to hoist himself and his friend back into the air, where Cyborg continued to take random potshots, aided by Starfire, who continued to throw starbolts towards what was left of it.

"You know, this thing's just getting pathetic," Beast Boy commented, making another dive towards Mortimer.

As Cyborg would later tell Beast Boy—loudly, that is—he should've kept his mouth shut. By this time, Mortimer was beginning to get mildly upset—well, if a giant creature made entirely of mostly-flammable guck could get upset. It had been having a grand old time watching the humans run and scream while it took a leisurely stroll through downtown, and then these stupid kids with their superpowers had shown up and immediately began wrecking its fun. So it did the only thing it really knew how to do—it began regenerating itself while throwing out random balls of sludge at the annoying mammals.

Meanwhile, across town...

"Oh come on, it's not like I'm asking you to drive into it! I just want you to drive a few blocks down and park it, then open it up facing downhill or something so we can use it to get rid of the monster," Gauntlet pleaded with the driver of the truck.

Shaking his head, the driver—Sam Mills—took a few steps closer to his truck. "No can do, kid. These things have a bad habit of blowing up every time you and your friends show up, so I'm not going anywhere near there."

Finally though, Gauntlet had had enough. This day had started out fine: he'd woken up shortly after noon, ate some Lucky Charms (he'd had to hide the box, since Kory had eaten every last marshmallow out of the last one), and gone to take a shower...and that's where it went downhill. It seemed to him that sometime during the middle of his beloved morning shower, some other author had hijacked him and the rest of the Titans and decided that Robert's morning had been going too well and needed something to make it a little more entertaining. It was just too much for poor Gauntlet to take in one morning, so he decided to do what he did best...

"Oh crap, the monster! Duck!" he yelled, pointing behind Sam. Before the trucker had a chance to turn around fully though, Gauntlet had used the energy from his namesake to form a makeshift bludgeon and smack the man across the back of the head. Using the same energy to catch Mr. Mills before he cracked his head open on the concrete, Rob found a quiet place to stash him until this mess was over. "It's been a while since I've stolen anything anyway..." he grinned, forgetting that earlier that very morning he had stolen half of Noel's CD collection (and switched the discs and their cases around while he was at it) while the boy in question had been otherwise occupied with his girlfriend.

Back with Mortimer...

Savior, who had been helping Raven throw any and everything (except a kitchen sink, as they hadn't found one yet, but _had_ managed to come across an old port-a-pot—besides, that was just too cliche) at Mortimer while Terra continued to hurl medium sized boulders at it, ducked yet another ball of crud hurled his general direction. "Crap, I hate it when they just randomly throw shit instead of actually aiming," he grumbled, using the Shimmer to spring up from the ground.

He almost didn't notice the young girl stumble out of the alleyway to his right—almost. When he did, he squinted. 'She looks like Raven,' he thought, glancing back towards where his girlfriend was hurling a mailbox at Mortimer. Turning back, he took a closer look at the girl. 'No, the skin color's wrong, and that's hair, not a cloak.' He had to admit though; he'd never seen hair quite that long. It stretched down her back, almost all the way down to her knees.

He snapped out of his confusion in time to spot yet another ball of sludge, this time heading for the mysterious girl, and react. With a Shimmer-assisted jump, he made a flying tackle that sent them both clear of its path...good thing too, since it slammed into the building behind where the girl had been standing and had left a decent sized crater. Glancing down, he saw that her eyes were closed and she looked pretty much out of it. Well, they'd mostly made it clear—the splatter had coated most of their clothes as well as her hair.

Standing, Noel picked the girl up over one shoulder and retreated back to where Scalpel had taken shelter near the T-Car. "Here! I think she may have broken something in the fall. She's out cold," he said, passing her over to their resident doctor before taking off on the offensive against Mortimer again.

Nigel quickly set the girl down as gently as he could before checking her over for injuries. "She's mostly unharmed, thankfully," he said quietly, wondering how Raven and Terra—and the police, for that matter—had missed this one. "Dislocated shoulder..."

Just as Savior was running over to join Terra and Raven, a loud noise from behind them caught their attention. Turning, they found Gauntlet getting out of the fuel truck he had.. uh... liberated! Yeah, he rescued it from a biker gang of twenty axe wielding maniacs and the driver had been so thankful that he'd let Gauntlet borrow the truck!

"I told you I saw a fuel truck," he grinned as the three others fell back to his position. "Think you guys can handle this while I go help Robin, Cy, BB, and Star occupy Mortimer?"

"Why you?" Savior asked, and then glanced at the truck. "And since when do you have a CDL?"

"I don't, I—ah... It just came to me," Rob grinned. He wasn't going to complain if the author decided to take liberties and let him get off relatively easy at this point—besides, grinding gears for ten minutes to get all of a mile and a half would have been boring.

Narrowing his eyes suspiciously, Savior glanced back to the fight with Mortimer. "Why you though?"

"Because I can do this," Gauntlet responded, throwing up a shield all of two seconds before a stray shot from Mortimer splattered against it when it would have hit everyone standing there. "Robin and the others need that more than you guys do at the moment, right?"

"Go!" Savior nodded, turning back to the truck. Unfortunately, it was facing the wrong way. "Raven, Terra—can you help me move this? Then we can direct the spray so that it coats most of the road around Mortimer while Robin and the others find a way to knock it into pieces small enough to burn too fast to regenerate."

Together, the trio managed to turn the truck completely around before waiting for Robin's signal. Speaking of Robin...

"Star, Cy, concentrate on its legs!" he yelled, throwing the last of his explosive discs at its left leg. The explosives detonated in the same instant that Cyborg and Starfire hit the right leg, which severed both...but Mortimer didn't fall. Instead, it raised both arms and flung a huge ball of itself at Robin. He was too close to dodge and he was out of explosives.

Robin opened his eyes, which he had closed along with holding his breath in the hope that he wouldn't drown in Mortimer's sludge. In front of him, the slimy black filth was sliding down off of a yellow barrier. "Miss me?" Gauntlet asked, grinning.

"Not a bit. Did you get the fuel truck?" Robin asked, silently thanking his comrade.

Gauntlet nodded. "Yeah. Raven, Terra, and Savior are setting it up now."

Digging through his utility belt, Robin came up with a freeze disc. "Right. Find a way to knock this damn thing down and it'll be all over."

"Yeah, all over us when it hits. Euck."

Laughing, Robin pulled out his communicator and punched in the code for the one built into Cyborg's arm. "It can't be helped."

"Robin! Please tell me that's a tanker truck I see and that you have something left that can put this thing on its ass," Cyborg greeted from his position atop Beast Boy's—who was currently in the form of a gryphon—back.

Glancing up at Mortimer, Robin nodded before waving the freeze disc into the communicator's video pickup. "Yeah—freeze disc. You and Star get ready to fire on it and tell Beast Boy to turn into something with enough mass knock it down and keep it that way."

"Brachiosaur!" Beast Boy called over his shoulder as he landed directly in front of Mortimer.

"That'll work. Gauntlet, cover Beast Boy and Cyborg," Robin added, turning to regard the boy beside him. "Titans! Go!"

With a running leap, Robin flung the freeze disc into Mortimer's leg, and then continued his dash until he reached what he thought would be a safe distance. As soon as the disc went off, Starfire and Cyborg let loose with a hail of bullets and starbolts. Seeing the leg shatter, Beast Boy changed into the largest dinosaur he could think of at the time—the previously mentioned brachiosaur—and brought his gigantic tail around into Mortimer's midsection. At the same time, up the small hill, Savior's group opened up the tanker and began coating the area around Mortimer.

Robin stood, turning his head up to watch Kory as she charged another massive starbolt in preparation to turn Mortimer into several small puddles. Unfortunately, this is where the plan snowballed. Without standing, Mortimer launched another blob at itself—this time up at Starfire, which actually hit and caused her to unintentionally disperse the energy she'd gathered. Luckily for her though, she wasn't weighed down or surprised enough to actually fall...but damn she felt filthy.

Deciding to hopefully burn Mortimer before it could gather itself enough to stand again, Cyborg ignited his internal blow torch and touched it to the fuel surrounding the creature—after making sure none of his teammates were standing in it. His plan half-succeeded: Mortimer did catch fire, but he managed to stand again. "Not good."

Checking in on our doctor and his patient, a little while before...

After finding that Savoir had dislocated the girl's shoulder whilst trying to keep her from becoming a greasy smear on the side of the building, Nigel decided that he should go ahead and relocate her shoulder for her while she was still unconscious enough not to feel it. Propping her up, he attempted to take stock of her arm again to make sure he was correct, lest he cause more damage than he was going to fix, but her hair got in his way. "This is going to be a problem later," he mumbled, deciding to go on and spare her the trouble of trying to remove Mortimer from her hair while he was at it.

Bunching the majority of her knee-length hair near the base of her neck, he used the claws of one hand to shear straight through it, and then discarded the monster-covered bunch in his other hand. Grabbing her arm and lifting it out straight, he tensed. "Here goes. This may hurt a bit," he told her before jerking on the arm sharply. The sick sound of a shoulder relocating itself was completely expected...feeling her go stiff in his arms wasn't. Later that day, Scalpel would repeatedly thank whatever gods his Blacktrinian ancestors could have named that he hadn't been directly in her line of sight...

At the sharp pain in her shoulder, the girl stiffened. Her head jerked up and her eyes opened. Before her, down the street, a giant flaming monster was currently attempting to burn the Titans to a crisp. Instinctively, she somehow knew that it had done this to her. Pupils contracted and _something_ inside her mind took over. Scalpel leaned back in time to see a pair of symbols illuminate a bright orange on her forehead before she vanished. His last thoughts were the Blacktrinian equivalent of "holy shit, which gods did I piss off today?"

Above the Titans and directly even with Mortimer's chest, the mysterious metahuman girl reappeared...along with three giant...wings made of pure energy, each the same shape as the crest currently burned into her forehead—one above either shoulder and the final pointed down in line with her legs. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated, then she threw out her previously injured arm—the internal damage regenerated instantly, as the pair of bracelets on her wrist clacked together. Her actions seemed to imply two things: 1.) Mortimer didn't stand a snowball's change in hell of hurting her at the moment, and 2.) since it had earlier, it was all of three seconds from becoming a flaming grease smear on the pavement.

Robin stared upwards, wondering what the hell was going on. Pulling out the communicator again, he opened a channel to all available Titans. "Guys, I think we should fall back."

Also watching the girl, Raven agreed. The power and emotions radiating off of the girl were impossible to ignore at this range—both of which felt unlike nearly anything she had ever felt before, and they ran deep, really deep.

The girl seemed to ignore all of this, but was actually paying very close attention. She waited until those below her got clear before bringing her right arm to bear on Mortimer. The pair of bracelets glowed the same shade of orange as the wings holding her up before those wings disappeared...only to reappear a second later, directly in front of her palm. Closing her fist caused the trio of wings to mimic her actions as they folded in close to one another. Had someone been watching from Mortimer's viewpoint (and not been too busy soiling themselves or running to pay attention), they would have brought to mind a flower closing its petals.

Mortimer, had he had any brains whatsoever, might have been worried at this point. Instead, it simply mimicked the human hovering in front of him by raising its flaming arm so that its giant palm faced the girl and her wings. Both girl and monster pulled their arms back at the same time as energy and sludge coalesced into disproportionate balls—one in the monster's fist, the other in the space between wings. A half-second later, both hands shot forward.

Time slowed for a moment as energy and sludge flew towards one another...then returned to its normal pace as they made contact and the ball of light struck Mortimer's flaming sludge before blowing straight through it and continuing on towards its owner. What was left of the ball of sludge was pulled back towards the one that launched it by whatever forced propelled the girl's weapon.

What happened next happened too quickly to accurately describe later. Before the odd girl's weapon struck Mortimer, the wings that had launched it began to spin at an insane pace, so that it looked for a second like a giant cone of orange light hovered in front of her. As the ball struck Mortimer, splattering it into a nigh-uncountable number of fragments of itself, the wings shattered into an equal number of orange light particles—each of which streaked towards a piece of the falling Mortimer. Poor Mortimer was no more before he even had a chance to hit the ground.

Panting, the girl's eyes rolled back into her head before the crests on her forehead faded and whatever force that held her aloft decided to stop defying gravity for the day. She fell.

Below, the Titans watched as the girl arched towards the street. Half of them were too stunned to move; the other half were already moving but were too far away. All...with the exception of one. Gauntlet had been the last to fall back after Robin had given the order to move. Running on instinct alone, he formed a catcher's mitt with his energy and extended it under the falling girl...only to have her fall right through it. Later, he would question simply putting it down to him missing because the sun happened to be in his eyes.

Going to Plan B, Rob jumped, mimicking Savior's move earlier of using his power to assist. "Gotcha!" he yelled, catching her only a dozen and a half feet from a messy end on the street, then using his power to soften their landing as he rolled across the asphalt. He wound up directly above her, looking down. 'Hey, I got the girl,' he mused briefly, grinning. His grin was cut short however when he noticed three things: her eyes had rolled back in her head, she was shaking like mad, and ...his gauntlet felt funny. Deciding to ignore the third one, he quickly turned her over and held her head up off the street, hoping to keep her from swallowing her tongue. "Scalpel, Raven, ANYONE! HELP!"

"How's the patient, Nigel?" Tim asked, walking into the alien's medical lab in Titan Tower. It had been Nigel's call to bring the girl back to the tower, as his lab had the best equipment in Jump City (partly due to Cyborg, partly to Batman), and the nearest facility with anything capable of dealing with metahuman problems was a branch of Star Labs. At the time, the Blacktrinian had had his doubts about her making it to the Tower, let alone out of the city.

"Very well, Tim. Almost too well, actually, unless she has some sort of healing ability."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Do you see this?" he asked, pulling down her shirt to reveal the previously-injured shoulder. "There should be bruising where this was dislocated—I put it back in place myself, so I'm not mistaken that it was before we brought her here. And even if there weren't, there should at least be a bruise or two where I held her arm to fix it. Her skin looks like it's the type to bruise easily."

Tim nodded, walking around the bed. "I see. Have you taken a blood sample yet?"

"No, not yet. I was going to do that when you came in. How did your search go?"

Laughing, Tim sat down. "She's dead, Jim." At the Blacktrinian's confused look, Tim shook his head. "Never mind. I ran her retinal scans and finger prints through every database I could... social security, criminal records, I even ran her description through missing persons."

"And...?"

"Everything came back the same. Like I said, she's dead. Medical records, hospital records... she died a month ago, just outside of Metropolis. I also found a few other things... she was a metahuman before she died, that much is for sure, but—from what I can tell, she never had that kind of power. All she had were a few empathic abilities—reading emotions and the like."

Taking out a syringe, Nigel attempted to find a vein in the girl's arm. "What did she die of?"

Tim 'mmm'ed. "That's the odd part. It didn't say. Try as I could, I couldn't find a cause of death listed. Unless someone somewhere was very sloppy, it should have at least said something like 'natural causes.'"

Finished drawing blood, Nigel put the sample into a glass vial and began preparing it for closer examination. "That is strange. Did you get a name?"

"Yeah, Kate Rivers. And there's something I need to check," he added, standing and taking the few steps required to draw alongside the girl.

Nigel turned his attention to his leader, ignoring the blood sample for the moment—it wasn't going anywhere. "What?"

Tim pulled off one of her shoes, followed quickly by the sock under it. "She was born with a birth defect," he said quietly, though he knew Nigel could hear him.

"Is it normal for humans to have four toes?" Nigel asked, regarding the foot between himself and Tim.

"No. Check the other," said Tim, raising the bottom of her shirt. "No belly button either—just like the medical records said."

Discarding the matching pair of shoe and sock, Nigel regarded the other foot, and then what Tim was looking at. "I am missing a toe here as well."

Tim nodded. "Then it's definitely her—" he started, but was cut off mid-sentence by the sound of glass breaking from nearby. "What was that?"

Nigel, with his _much_ better hearing, knew that sound well: it was the sound of a test tube shattering. He had dropped several the previous day actually, so the sound was still relatively fresh in his mind. Turning, he regarded the counter where he'd placed the blood sample. He was joined there shortly by Tim. "The tube broke..."

Pulling a small plastic bag—for really small evidence, like hairs—from his utility belt, Tim used a nearby scalpel (no, not the alien) to sweep a few of the small dark crystals on the counter into the bag. "Look, they're changing colors."

Nigel had to agree. The crystals that had obviously caused the tube to shatter from inside were quickly darkening from the color of fresh blood to that of dried blood...and then to black. "Strange. It seems that if we want to give her blood a workup, we will have to find a way to do it inside her body."

"What could have made it do that?" Tim asked, glancing at the girl in the bed behind them. "Air maybe?"

"No," Nigel shook his head. "It was entirely air-tight. Light would be my guess."

"Ok. I'll go run this through the scanners in the lab and send the data to Oracle," Tim said as he made his way to the door, but was stopped by Noel.

"Raven wants to see you." The implied 'make it quick, **_please_**' was obvious almost to the point of waking the girl on the bed.

"All right. Hey, while you're here, why don't you and Nigel take a quick look around her head. Oh, and Nigel—anything else I should know?" Tim asked, wanting to get the results of his scans to Oracle as soon as possible.

"Just that she probably won't wake up for the next several hours—with what I assume is her current rate of healing, it will probably be late tomorrow before she is actually coherent enough for questioning. She completely drained herself of power with that stunt, which is possibly what sent her into a minor seizure. And Noel—I think that's a bad idea."

Raising an eyebrow, Noel paused the Shimmer line he'd been about to put into the girl's ear. "Why?"

Nigel pointed towards the shattered test tube. "Her blood _crystallized_. I don't think you want to do that until we know what made it do so. Of course, my own blood is flammable, but that is not normal for a human. It could just be some kind of built in defensive mechanism, but wouldn't your research have turned something like that up Tim?"

Rubbing his eyes, Tim nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry Noel. Think you guys can get her into an isolation cell if she isn't in immediate danger of dying?"

"Sure," Noel replied, making a shooing motion towards Tim. "Go talk to Raven and Oracle."

As soon as Tim was out of earshot, Noel turned back to Nigel. "Let's go—I want to make this quick."

"Most certainly—your desire to spend time with Raven is completely understandable," Nigel grinned, wondering if he should pay a visit to Sophie soon, if she wasn't too busy.

"Busted," Noel laughed, helping the alien wheel the young Miss Rivers towards the isolation cells.

Rob passed Tim in the hall, on his way to the medical ward. "Hey, Tim. Raven said—"

"Noel told me Rob, thanks."

"Right. Where's uhh..."

"Kate. Isolation cells."

"Thanks, Tim."

Grinning, Tim regarded Rob more closely for a moment. Whatever he saw there, he kept to himself for the moment. "Could you tell Nigel and Noel that we're going to be debriefing on the battle in a couple of hours, just as soon as I get something back from Oracle?"

Rob nodded. "Sure—might as well warn Noel that he and Raven won't have much private time any time soon. Oh! About that thing earlier..."

"What thing?"

Darting his head around quickly, Rob stepped closer to Tim. "About the author... We're pretty sure it isn't any of the usual guys, right?"

Tim nodded. "Pretty sure. The writing style is different and the characterization could use a little work."

Rob coughed, glancing upwards. "Hope they didn't hear that. Anyway... that _was_ Mortimer we fought?"

"Yes..."

"And there is a beautiful girl lying in a bed somewhere in the Tower...?"

"Yes..."

"Which means..." Rob asked hopefully, not quite daring to hope that the male to female ratio for the team might get better sometime soon.

"It means we'll probably find a reason that she'll have to stick around soon enough. Don't cross your fingers though Rob. I don't want a repeat of what happened the last time we picked up a new member. This team doesn't need that kind of stress again. In fact, if I can help it, she'll be out of here as soon as she's able to walk," Tim said grimly, thinking back to an incident in the not-so-distant past involving their most recent addition to the team.

"Come on! Every guy on the team has a girlfriend but me! And you saw her, she was cute..." Rob trailed off, remembering the feel of said girl in his arms from earlier...and then remembering something else.

"Everyone but Vic."

Rob nodded, sobering quickly—which was unusual for him. "Yeah... but that was just a fucked up situation at the time."

Sighing, Tim started off towards where he figured Raven would be waiting. "I know Rob and I don't want to see something like that happening again. Don't get your hopes up," he tossed over his shoulder, heading for the elevator.

Heading in the other direction, Robert Candide decided that despite what Tim thought, he wanted this girl to stick around...even though he didn't know her at all. Once again thinking back to the battle, he finally had time to run everything through his head. 'Maybe I should call Pangloss...' he thought, heading in the direction of the isolation cells.

"I'm calling Blood."

One of Tim's eyebrows rose in question. "Why?"

Sitting in the middle of one of the couches in the Titan's main living room, Raven looked the most agitated that Tim had seen her in a while. "You can't feel it, can you? Something just feels _wrong_ Tim. And what she did—it wasn't possible. I don't care who you are—most metahumans couldn't do that... any that I can think of offhand anyway. With the possible exceptions of someone like Green Lantern or Superman, it's just impossible."

"I agree with you."

"You do?"

Robin nodded, waving the baggie at her. "Her blood crystallized when Nigel tried to take a sample. It wasn't instant, but it still happened within a matter of minutes. I'm going to run this through Oracle. Go ahead and call Jason. ...Maybe we should ask Rob to call Couch Potato the Mighty, depending on what Blood says."

"You don't like her either, do you?"

"I didn't say that," Tim denied, looking thoughtfully at the bag in his hand. "But unlike Rob, I'm not willing to just accept her presence as a coincidence, or even the beneficial effects of some new author wanting to introduce a new character. I'm not taking any chances, so... make the call."

Raven stood, making her way to a nearby phone—yes, a regular phone and not a videophone. Pausing before she picked it up, she glanced back at Tim's retreating form. "Vic and Rob had a point though—there hasn't been any yelling about the fourth wall. The fact that we're pretty much talking about it freely means that Legend Maker isn't at the keyboard."

"I know," he agreed before leaving the room in search of another with the equipment he was looking for.

Picking up the phone, Raven dialed a number that had anyone but the Titans, or Batman, or the Justice League, or one or two other people dialed would have just come back as an 'out of service' line. "Blood," the voice on the other end confirmed as a way of greeting.

"It's Raven. I need to ask you a favor..."

"So there's this girl, right?"

"Uhhuh."

Rob caught the sound of pork rinds being chewed from the other end of the line. "And she fell from the sky, and I caught her."

"Good to hear, Rob—glad you finally caught a girl. That all?" Rob's sometime-mentor asked, draining the contents of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi in one go to wash down his pork rinds.

"No. She uh... I thought I might have missed, but I didn't. She fell through the mitt I made with the gauntlet," Rob explained, glancing down at the inactive artifact.

"So, some girl fell through its power?" Pangloss asked, putting the pork rinds down in favor of a bucket of KFC and flipping through channels on his cable tv. 'Reruns of Dr. Phil, reruns of Oprah, reruns of Judge Judy...'

Rob nodded, though he knew the man couldn't see it. "It was like it wasn't even there. I had to actually jump and catch her to keep her from becoming street-pizza. And that's not all...the gauntlet feels weird any time I'm around her."

"Robert, I have two questions. First: Are you working under a different author right now?"

"Yes."

"Well, there you go. Problem solved. Secondly: Just what did she do?" he asked, only mildly interested—**anything** was better than more of the same old daytime tv crap.

Rob tried to explain as much of the fight involving the girl as he could but it had ended so quickly that he hardly understood it himself. "And then they just went out and she fell."

"Went out?"

"Yeah, kind of like a light flickering right before the power goes out in the middle of a storm."

Pressing his hand to his forehead, Pangloss tried to bring to mind anything that could explain what his young friend had seen, if only to get the kid to leave him alone. Rob's entertainment factor was starting to wear thin now and Dr. Phil was starting to look appealing—which would have been a scary thought to most people with an IQ higher than Rob's. "I don't know Rob. Nothing's jumping out at me. Maybe she's just got an artifact or something herself."

"Pangloss...it's not like you can just go to the local A-Mart and get one."

"Are you so sure?" he laughed, picking up another bottle and emptying half its contents. "The way things happen with you metahumans, I wouldn't be surprised. Hell, she may even have some fragment of a broken god for all we know."

Now Rob was really confused. "Huh? God, fragment, what?"

"Never mind. So, about that girl...she cute?"

Rob groaned, but knew he was busted. "Yeah."

"Ha! Robbie's in love!"

"Shut up, I am not! What do you know? You watch soap operas all day!"

"Exactly. You said you've got a new author, right? By soap opera law, one of three things must happen now—and it'll be sooner, rather than later. Either the two of you will pair up, she'll die, or she'll turn out to really be some evil bitch bent on world destruction. Well, I say three things... those are just general scenarios. Things may be a bit different, or it may be combinations of the three, but in a soap opera it's pretty much guaranteed."

Rob grinned. "This isn't daytime tv dude. The hero won't get the girl who later turns out to be an evil alien zombie clone who wants to use him to rule the world and in the end she winds up sacrificing herself because she's seen the wrongness of her ways and desperately wants one last chance to make it up."

"Robert, we're all living in a glorified cartoon soap opera. If it can happen, it **will**. Now, mind if I get back to watching reality?" Pangloss asked.

"Go ahead. I'll call again later."

"Later, G-man."

Rob hung up the phone, Pangloss's last words running through his mind. 'Man, he gets weird after watching Dr. Phil.' He shrugged and headed for the isolation cells. He found the cell housing the girl—Kate—and noted that she wasn't alone. Nigel was still watching over her.

"What's up?" Rob asked, glancing through the semi-transparent field blocking entry or exit to the cell and trying to ignore the near-incessant..._pulling_ sensation coming from the gauntlet.

"Hello Rob. Something seems to be going on with our friend."

"What?"

Nigel stood and handed Rob a handheld gadget that he assumed made sense to the alien. "Take a look for yourself."

"Uhhuh... and this tells me what, Nigel? It's all Blacktrinian to me."

Nigel grinned. "It is a human device that monitors a patient's vital signs remotely, without actually having to attach more than one receptor."

"Oh," Rob looked sheepish. "So what's it say?"

"It says that her brainwave activity is rising. I do not know what to compare it to though, so I have no idea what is going on."

"Could it be leading up to another seizure?"

Nigel shook his head. "It is possible, but unlikely. My guess is that she pushed herself too hard when we first met her. Perhaps that was the first time her powers ever manifested themselves."

"But she looked like she knew what she was doing..."

"I know. There are many other things about her that we don't understand yet, but hopefully she can provide us with answers."

Rob shrugged, looking more closely at the girl behind the barrier. A high-pitched droning beep would have drawn his attention to Nigel's pocket-med device, had the girl abruptly sitting up in her bed and clutching her head not already done so. She said nothing, did nothing, other than whimper once and fall back down to the bed, panting softly. Looking closely, Rob could see the beginnings of tears in her one visible eye. "Nigel, what the hell was that?" he asked softly, not wanting to draw her attention just yet.

Glancing at the device in his claws, Nigel shrugged and then stated the obvious. "She awoke."

"Yeah, but why?"

A groan from the bed shut him up as the girl rolled over onto her side—facing the cell-wall—and promptly began to snore. If this was odd, it was overshadowed by the fact that she didn't so much as twitch when alarms started sounding throughout the Tower and Tim's voice came over the intercom. "Titans, assemble in the briefing room! Two minutes, people. This _is_ an emergency!"

Taking one last look at his patient, Nigel pocketed his gizmo. "You heard the man.," he said, taking off at a run for the elevator. Rob followed shortly after, somehow managing to tear his eyes off the girl's face and finally drown out the incessant tugging coming from his artifact.

Inside the briefing room, Tim was forced to remind himself for the thirtieth time in as many seconds that he was on duty and they were in the middle of a possibly-life-threatening situation. For the thirty-second time, his lower brain as it were pointed out three facts: 1.) Kory was in the briefing room with him—alone, 2.) Kory—alone with Tim in the briefing room—was wearing naught but a two-piece swim suit, and 3.) Kory's skimpy swimsuit-that-doubles-as-floss, along with Kory herself, were currently dripping onto the carpet of the briefing room—in which said dripping wet, scantly clad, beautiful young alien girl and he were currently **alone**.

"Kory."

"Yes, Tim?"

"Why are you wet?" he asked, not realizing he'd made a double entendre.

Kory, for her seemingly-innocent nature, did pick up on his slip of the tongue however. Grinning shyly, she answered. "Because you called me..."

Tim blinked. Tim almost sweat-dropped. Tim came two seconds from pushing the girl of his dreams against the wall of the briefing room, locking the door, and saying 'to hell with it,' in regards to their current situation. As it stood, they could be screwed in a very bad way very soon—and what better way to go than making love with the girl you would literally die for. 'I won't go into that line of thinking.'

Kory could see where Tim's thoughts were taking him and truthfully, she would have welcomed it...well, the first part—not the whole dying thing. No, she'd rather live to do that again another day, and the day after, and... "I took a shower and then decided to go up to the pool and get some sun."

Taking off his cape, he stepped closer and motioned her to turn around. Wrapping it around her barely-clad form in a hug from behind, he grinned. "Maybe later, Kory."

Kory nodded, pressing back into Tim's armored chest. 'At least he took the mask off,' she thought idly. 'And the cape _does_ feel so good. It is very soft...'

The two were interrupted by Victor as he strolled into the room and took his customary seat. "So are we taking bets?"

Tim nodded, pulling Kory's chair out for her and convincing her to sit as well. "Yeah. My money's on Raven and Noel."

"Robert," Kory said thoughtfully, remembering the events of that morning. "I shall bet on Rob."

"And you, Vic?"

Victor grinned, leaning back. "BB and the Rock-and-Roller."

A moment later, Nigel and Rob hurried in and took their respective seats. "What'd we miss, boss?"

"Who is attacking this time?" Nigel asked, watching curiously as Victor extended a hand towards Kory, who muttered something about leaving her money in her other change of clothes.

"It isn't an attack Nigel—at least not in the conventional sense," Tim answered, glancing at Vic. "Care to raise the stakes?"

"How much?"

"Loser buys dinner for the group tonight."

"Done," Victor said, not hesitating in the least. What Tim didn't know was that there was no chance in hell he would lose. He was proven right a few seconds later when Raven and Noel walked through the door.

"Damnit, you cheated."

Victor shrugged. "You know me better than that, man." Besides—it wasn't cheating really if you had a habit of monitoring the positions of your teammates by accessing their communicators' tracking beacon every few minutes, just to be on the safe side.

Soon after Noel and Raven, Gar and Tara made their way in. "Dude, you have the worst timing," Tara complained, taking her seat beside Gar.

Tim finally took his place at the head of the table and spoke up. "As of this moment, Titan Tower is under strict quarantine. No one comes in, no one goes out," he said, tapping away at a recessed keyboard in front of his chair. 'Take that, Victor!'

"Why, Tim?" asked Kory.

Nigel's following words were more of a statement of fact rather than a question. "It was a virus, wasn't it."

Tim nodded. "Yeah. Whatever this thing is, it's bad. It acts within twelve hours, crystallizing the blood the moment it comes into contact with oxygen. Once the reaction has started, there's no way to stop it. That's pretty much all Oracle could find. Right now, we need to know if it's communicable. Nigel, Vic, you're going to help me get to work figuring out just how nasty this thing is. Raven and Noel, I want the two of you to contact the JLU and see if you can't get in touch with someone there who can help. Gar and Tara, same thing with Star Labs."

"Tim, there is something you should know," Nigel interrupted.

"Yeah?"

The resident doctor slid his medico-gizmo across the table to their leader. "She woke up. It wasn't for very long, but I think it is possible to bring her around again."

Tim nodded. "Ok. For now, that's plan B. Kory, I want you and Rob to go through my notes, Oracle's data, and anything else you can find. When and if this girl wakes up, I want the two of you there to talk to her. Nigel means well, but..."

"I have a face that scares small children," the alien agreed quietly, though he was smiling.

"Exactly. Talk to her, find out what she knows—if anything—and report back to me."

Rob groaned for what felt like the hundredth time that day. "But I hate research. I never did well in school," he whined.

"Get used to it Rob. There is a lot more to this superhero thing than just going out and smashing the bad guy."

"But I like going out and smashing things. I mean, who doesn't? It's part of what makes us good at what we do! Deep down, we all love to blow stuff up."

"Despite the fact that it makes me almost want to bash my head against the table until I reach unconsciousness, I have to agree," said Noel, wondering if he could just convince Raven to do it for him.

"No dashing your brains out—I don't care how many times you say they'll grow back, I don't want to risk it."

Despite her warning, Noel's head fell forward until it thunked loudly against the table. "Just put me out of my misery. I can't believe I actually agreed with Rob. It's bound to be the new author. Rob isn't making more sense—I'm just being dumbed down to his level."

"Stuff it, you DBZ reject."

"Rob... I'm not going to go to the effort of flipping you off, so let's just say I did and get on with business."

"If the two of you are done pretending to be the main characters of this chapter, could you let someone else get a word or two in edgewise," Gar mumbled, drawing a laugh from Tara.

A telekinetic slap to the back of Rob's head and a thunk later, Raven turned her attention back to Tim. "Anything else?"

Tim shook his head. "No, not unless you want to call Jason Blood back and put his visit on hold."

"Maybe later."

Removing his head from the table, Rob sat back up. "I just remembered. Pangloss said she might have an artifact or be a demigod or something like that."

"Why'd you call him?" Tim asked, though he would have probably asked Rob to do it at some point anyway, depending on what Blood said.

"Just a hunch?" Rob asked, not wanting to go into his reasons just yet.

Tim let it slide. Rob would probably tell him when he was ready, if it were important enough. "Ok. Titans, you have your orders."

And that's it for the official first chapter of this ficlet. What did you think? This thing started off a few months ago as just a short intro for a plot to a Titans fic that had been floating around in my head for a while. Deciding it'd be better to just go on and get it out of my system, I wrote out a small prologue to this chapter which may or may not go into the final version... if there is one. There might not (read as "probably won't") be a final version for several reasons. 1.) I have a bad habit of leaving things unfinished. 2.) I may just decide that my idea sucks harder than hard vacuum (though technically, that blows I think) and decide to scrap the project or drop it for another when something new and shiny comes along, or I dust off something a little older. Ok, so it's really just two reasons.

Let's get a few things straight, while we're at it... Kate's real name is not Mary Sue. I repeat: Kate is no Mary Sue. Then again, with the way I write, she may damn well sound like it at times. Secondly: I have no freaking clue where this is going. If you figure it out, tell me, I'd love to know. Thirdly: "Are you actually writing this out of the need to come up with someone for Gauntlet?" I honestly have no clue, but probably not. I don't know if Pangloss is aloof enough this time around, but I think maybe. Any input whatsoever would be greatly appreciated.


	2. Why Didn't I Think of That Sooner?

Assume the disclaimer posted in the previous chapter applies to all chapters herein.

**God's Playground**

02 - Now Why Didn't I Think of That Sooner?

And now, In accordance with a tradition started oh so long ago, the theme!

_**Cue three-minute special long opening...**_

_Robin flies across the screen in his familiar falling kick._

When there's trouble, you know who to caaall..

TEEN TITANS!

_Titan Tower standing on its island off the shore of Jump City._

From their tower, they can see it aaaall..

TEEN TITANS!

_Lettering to purple, slide over to various scenes of Raven teleporting, using spells, and generally doing what Raven does best. End with the close-up head shot._

When there's evil on the attack, you can rest knowing they got your back...

_Raven flight over to green background, various scenes of Beast Boy changing into random animals in the background while he makes odd faces in the foreground before finally changing into a pterodactyl and flying up and across the screen._

Cause when the world needs heroes on patrooool..

TEEN TITANS, GO!

_Orange background, Starfire flies into and past the screen throwing starbolts before panning out to a view of her letting loose at something on the ground._

With their super powers, they uniiiiite....

TEEN TITANS!

_Background to yellow. Various scenes of Terra pulling up and throwing around boulders and city streets. Camera pans around behind her before shooting around the side of her head and fading out to..._

Never met a villain that they liiiiiiked..

TEEN TITANS!

_Blue background, familiar random shots of Cyborg ending with same scene of said Titan's fist flying into the camera._

They've got the bad guys on the run, they'll never stop 'till the job gets done...

_Gold background. Camera pans back from Cyborg's fist to reveal Gauntlet's namesake pulling back before throwing up shields, rams, and random shapes before turning quickly towards the camera and lashing out with a line of yellow energy._

Cause when the world is loosing aaall controooooll...

_Background to white. Savior lashing the Shimmer around and using it to perform various aerial acrobatics before finally swinging a booted foot back towards the camera..._

TEEN TITANS, GO!

_Background to black. Camera pans right to find Scalpel twirling and thrusting his glaive around and throwing various kicks and punches before ending with a glaive-swipe at the camera._

TEEN TITANS, GO!

_Background to red. Camera pans back to reveal Robin standing from a diving swipe with his bo-staff. Lightening flash illuminating the leader from behind followed by various scenes of him fighting with Slade._

If your heart is black, you better watch out...

_Cue random scenes of the team fighting together._

You can not escape the team...

When they catch you, there won't be any doubt...

You've been beaten by the Teeeen....

Beaten by the Teeeeeen....

_Individual characters flash by screen in above order in time to..._

T-E-E-N T-I-T-A-N-S

Teen Titans, let's go!

_Back to more scenes of each character randomly thrashing or getting thrashed by the bad guys._

T-E-E-N T-I-T-A-N-S

Teen Titans, let's go!

T-E-E-N T-I-T-A-N-S

Teen Titans, let's gooo!

When there's trouble, you know who to caaaaall..

TEEN TITANS!

From their tower, they can see it aaaall..

TEEN TITANS!

When there's evil on the attack, you can rest knowing they got your back...

Cause when the world needs heroes on patroooool..

TEEN TITANS, GO!

TEEN TITANS, GO!

One, two, three, four, GO! Teen Titans!

Several hours have passed since we first joined our heroes in their fair Tower. The sun was beginning its descent below the horizon by now and the signs of fatigue have started to show on all of their faces. In reality, it's only shortly after six in the evening, but it had been nearly four hours since Tim had initially placed Titan Tower under lockdown. With four of their assumed twelve-or-less hours lost and very few leads, many of them were beginning to worry.

"Augh! I give up!" Rob yelled, throwing the keyboard across the room he and Kory had chosen to use for their purposes. On a table near the center of the room stood a small stack of printouts... and not much else. They were getting nowhere, fast. "I'm not cut out for this kind of crap."

Kory looked up from the few sheets she'd been reviewing. "Friend Rob, you must have patience. Don't you think that myself, as well as the others, are close to reaching their wits'-end by now as well? Shouting and throwing the plastic board of keys into the wall will not aid us in our quest for answers."

Pacing the room quickly, Rob took a quick kick at the downed keyboard. "Maybe not, but it'll make me feel better."

"Would you like to exchange tasks?"

"...No. As much as I hate computer crap, I hate reading more. It should be Tim or Vic doing this, not me! Noel, Gar, Raven, just anyone but me," he whined, sitting down.

"Why do you not rejoice in the gloriousness of the opening titles? We were all in them this time!"

"Yeah, that's true. I looked so cool. And I was in them before Noel, ha!"

Laughing, Kory stood and stretched, wondering if it would be possible to convince Tim to take a break soon. "I can't help but wonder though... should we not feel bad about violating the fourth wall to this extreme? Perhaps there was a reason for Legend Maker's vehemence."

"Maybe you're right. I should feel bad, but," Rob nodded, and then paused. "I just realized that that is totally out of character for me. What do I care? I should be trying that much harder to break it since she isn't here to yell."

A second later, their room was filled with a sound very much like breaking glass. Looking around for the source of the noise, the pair discovered what can only be described as a jagged _hole_ in reality floating near the back of the room. "Rob, what have you done?"

"I broke the fourth wall! Woohoo!" Rob yelled, running over and taking a closer look. "I wonder where this leads."

Taking several steps back towards the exit, Kory shook her head. "I do not believe you should play with it."

Grinning, Rob stuck his hand in. "Come on, what's the worst that could happen?" he asked, waving his hand around. He stopped moving when it came into contact with something. Kneeling, he leant closer to the tear to attempt to get a look at whatever was on the other side but was greeted with darkness. His hand seemed to end where it met the portal. "What's this?"

He planted his hand firmly on whatever was on the other side and gave it an experimental squeeze. "Firm, but soft—it has some give to it," he mumbled, continuing to squeeze. Suddenly, whatever was on the other side jerked away violently...

Not too far away, Noel and Raven were still attempting to gather information through everyone they could get in contact with within the Justice League. Like Kory and Rob, they were running into dead ends at nearly every turn. "This is frustrating," Noel commented quietly, waiting for someone in the Watchtower to help him with a hack job involving the closest thing he had to a lead.

Raven would have replied, but an odd sensation cut her off. The weird feeling was followed shortly by what felt like a hand... a hand brushing and then squeezing her buttocks. Glancing more closely at Noel, she noted that he had both hands behind his head and the Shimmer didn't seem to be visible at the moment. "Noel..."

"Hmm?"

"There's something on my _ass_," she whispered, pointing towards her rear end.

Turning his chair to face his girlfriend, he regarded the area of her body in question. Sliding closer, he lifted up her cloak to reveal a hand—just a hand, sticking out from seemingly nowhere. Upon closer inspection though, it looked like it was poking through some sort of hole in reality. Also, there was a very familiar ring attached to one of its fingers.

"It looks like Rob's hand...poking out through some kind of tear. You don't think..."

Growling, Raven stood quickly and regarded the offending appendage. It began waving around, obviously trying to find whatever it'd been pressed against seconds earlier. "He's **dead**."

"Rob."

Startled, Rob withdrew his arm from the hole in space before turning to see who had called his name. "Uh, hi Raven. What's up?" he asked, trying to covertly hide his damage to the fourth wall by standing in front of it.

Raven didn't buy it for a second. "Is that a hole in the fourth wall?"

"No?"

"Did you make it?"

"Uhh... nope!"

Glaring, she took a single step forward, inwardly laughing at how he seemed to fight to stay where he stood. "Fix it, **_now_**, or you're a dead man," she ground out.

"Right!" Rob yelled, glancing around the room. Spotting a gray roll of what appeared to be tape; Rob picked it up and began patching the hole.

Raven, recognizing the tape for what it was, narrowed her eyes. 'Don't say it, don't say it...'

"Hey, it's true! Duct tape really does hold the universe together! It's like The Force—it has a light side and a dark side and...."

...We rejoin Kory and Rob ten minutes later. By this time, Rob is sporting several bruises, cuts, and judging by the ice pack, a black eye. Kory, who had backed out of the room as soon as Raven had teleported in, was failing to keep in her giggles. Luckily though, Raven had managed to actually close up the hole somehow... 'It still amazes me that there is an actual fourth wall,' she thought idly, still enjoying the look on Rob's face the moment he turned around.

"Man, I am really not liking this author," Rob muttered, flinching as the ice against his face shifted. He regretted his statement a second later though, when an invisible force slammed his head down into the table top.

"Robert, Raven warned you that should you violate the fourth wall again for the duration of the chapter, she would use her powers to propel your head into the nearest blunt object. Were you not conscious when she said this?" Kory asked, only mildly worried for her friend's safety—after all, he brought it upon himself.

"No, Star. I was pretty much out of it at that point. Where does she keep that cricket bat or whatever it was anyway..."

Deciding it would probably be in the best interests of finding a solution to their current crisis, Kory attempted to distract Rob and get him onto a topic that wouldn't invariably lead to cranial damage. "Why don't we review all that we have learned so far?"

"Ok, where do you want to start?"

She flipped through some of the documents on the table before coming to what she was seeking. "Medical records. Let us see... Our guest, Kate Rivers, was—at time of death some time close to three weeks ago—nineteen years of age, five feet and two inches tall, weighs one-hundred and nine pounds, had black hair, green eyes, and was born in November. No cause of death is listed, but the hospital is in Metropolis."

"Right, and now she's made her way here somehow," Rob added, putting down his ice pack. "I bet Noel could tell us if her clothes looked like she'd been on the road since then—my guess is that she came here by foot."

Kory nodded. "That is my assumption as well. Most hospitals in Metropolis keep a list of known metahuman patients—that is, if they bother going to a regular hospital. Possibly because of the nature of this virus, she was simply admitted to the closest hospital. They left a note on her records confirming that yes, she was a metahuman possessing some form of empathic powers."

"Empathic? You mean like being able to read thoughts?"

"No, that is telepathic. Empathic deals with emotions."

Rob stood, pacing around the table again. His boredom was once again manifesting itself physically. "Ok, so she's like you? Or maybe like Raven?"

"We don't have enough information. What did you find through the network of computing machines?" Kory asked, dropping her papers.

"Not much—just some school records, but you wouldn't believe how much trouble those were to get. She recently graduated from some crap-school on the outskirts of Metropolis—nothing really special. Her scores were actually pretty low compared to the rest of her graduating class, but nowhere near as bad as mine," Rob grinned.

"Did she participate in any sporting events?"

"Nunuh, not that I could find anyway. I tried calling a few of her classmates and teachers, but they were either unwilling to talk about her or just didn't recognize her name. It looks like she kept to herself."

Kory frowned. "I wonder why. Do you think it had something to do with her power?"

"No idea."

"What about earlier?" she asked, remembering what Nigel had said in the briefing room. "She woke up?"

Rob nodded, trying to remember exactly what had happened. "Yeah. We were talking and then Nigel's thing just went crazy, then she sat up for a minute before falling back down."

"Do you remember anything else?"

"She snores—loudly."

Laughing, Kory ran the events immediately preceding Rob and Nigel's entry into the briefing room through her head again. 'I was swimming in the pool on the roof to recharge my energy stores, the alarm sounded and I ran to the elevator, then Tim and I flirted for several moments before Victor joined us. Next, we made a wager upon who would be the last to enter the room—I chose Robert and Tim chose...'

"Rob?"

Rob glanced up from where he had actually been going over what they'd printed out. "Huh?"

"What were Raven, Noel, Tara, and Gar doing before the alarms sounded?" she asked, though she already suspected the answer.

"I dunno," Rob shrugged. "I think Noel and Raven went back to her room, and I don't want to know what Tara and Gar were doing. Why?"

Standing, Kory made for the door. "Let us go ask them."

Elsewhere, Gar was going through his own problems. He was usually good with stress, but all of the life-or-death situations that usually somehow seemed to come down to him to fix at the last minute were starting to add up. 'Man, I am so sick and tired of time limits.'

Near him, Tara wasn't having much luck either. No one she had talked to at Star Labs or any of the other big-name research facilities had seen anything like the scans they had sent in. The symptoms had raised a few eyebrows though, and once or twice someone had sent them a few files on a similar case. Besides those two or three leads, everything else seemed to be hitting a brick wall. "I can't think," Tara sighed, lamenting Tim's poor timing.

"Yeah, me too," Gar agreed, standing up where he had been typing out a few notes on the things they'd collected thus far. "I'm going to get something to drink... wanna come along?"

"Sure!" Tara grinned, following Gar from the room. 'Maybe, when this is all over, we'll finally have some time to ourselves. I'm in the mood for a movie, for some reason,' she thought, not realizing that something seemed amiss with that—that she was taking for granted the fact that Tim or Raven or Noel or someone would somehow find a way to make everything better again.

They found their way to the kitchen, where Kory and Rob looked to have shared their idea about a break. "How are things going on your end?" Gar asked, opening the fridge.

"Not good. We didn't find much of anything new. Kory may be onto something though," Rob answered, digging around through one of the cabinets for a bag of chips.

"Onto what? And what happened to your face?" Tara asked, noticing Rob's injuries for the first time.

Rob looked confused. "My face?"

"Yeah dude, you've got a black eye," Gar pointed out.

"Damn! It didn't go away when we went off-screen!" he cursed, only to regret it a second later when his head impacted with the cabinet door with a resounding thud. "Oww."

"What the hell?"

Kory was once again forced to suppress giggles. "Raven warned Rob not to break the fourth wall again today, or else she would cause his head to collide with the nearest solid object."

Tara looked confused. "Why would she do that? Legend Maker is obviously not—"

Rob cut her off by putting his hand over her mouth. "Shut up! Please! I don't want her thinking it was me."

Tara nodded and the hand left her mouth. "So anyway... what did Kory figure out?"

Beaming, Kory readied herself to relate her thoughts to her friends but was cut off by the Tower-wide intercom. "All Titans report to the medical lab. I repeat: All Titans, report to the medical lab," Nigel's voice echoed through the tower.

"It can wait until we are all together," Kory said as the four set off for the nearest elevator.

Had Tim made the same bet he'd made earlier in the day, he would have won it now—though not for the same reasons. Finally, after hours of work and a lot of help, Raven and Noel had managed to gather a few files pertaining to their current problem—files gained through the combined efforts of several members of the JLU which involved hacking into the computers of an unlisted biological weapons manufacturing plant somewhere in Montana.

As soon as they stepped into the medical lab, Tim began to speak. "Ok guys, what have you got so far?"

"Pretty much zilch," Rob volunteered. "Just some school records. We think she walked all the way here from Metropolis."

Tara spoke for her and Gar next. "One or two cases with similar symptoms—but nothing that completely matches what we've got here."

"Yeah, they didn't have a clue what it was when we sent them our stuff, but they're looking into it," Gar added.

Nodding at what Gar and Tara had said, Noel thought back to what they'd found. "We found something... Well, the guys at the Watchtower did. We think it was being developed as some kind of biological weapon by the government, but we're not sure on the details."

"What he means to say is that most of the data had been destroyed and we found this only by sheer dumb luck. The plant has been empty for the past month," said Raven.

Robin nodded as though he'd expected as much. "It sounds like some kind of anti-metahuman weapon, but something about this has been bothering me for a while. If it acts within twelve hours, why haven't we started showing symptoms yet?"

"What are you getting at?" asked Tara.

"I'm saying that I don't think it's airborne, so we may not be infected. That's why Nigel is going to take blood from all of you."

Glancing at the packet of needles the resident doctor had produced from seemingly nowhere, Rob began to fidget. "Are you sure we all have to do it?"

Nigel answered, grinning. "Yes, and you have volunteered yourself to be first my friend."

"Nunuh, no way! What about Tim? As the leader, he should go first!"

"I _was_ first, Rob," Tim said, holding out his arm so they could see the small bandage there.

"Damn. Vic!?"

Shaking his head, Victor grinned. "Nope, sorry man. Already went."

"Uh... Noel!"

Noel raised an eyebrow. Snapping out the Shimmer, he forcibly pulled Rob's arm into range of Nigel's needle and held it there long enough for the Blacktrinian to draw a sample of blood. "Sorry Rob, it's for your own good."

"I hate you all!" Rob shouted once the needle had been removed before walking over to sulk near the back of the room.

"You next, Noel," Nigel called, looking up in time to see Noel flinch.

"Crap. I hate needles."

Once the Titans had finished giving blood (and Rob had gotten over being stabbed in the back...or arm, as it were), Kory remembered what she had wanted to ask earlier. "What was everyone doing before Tim sounded the alarms? I was in the pool and Robert and Nigel were with our guest, but what about the rest of you?"

"I was cleaning parts of Mortimer out of my circuits," Victor answered, still disgusted at what he had found clinging to his inner workings.

"And I was in touch with Oracle. That leaves just the four of you," Tim pointed out, motioning towards Raven, Noel, Gar, and Tara.

Tara blushed, Gar probably did but no one would have been able to tell (except possibly Victor, had be turned on his infrared sensor), Raven suddenly found the fastener to her cloak very interesting, and Noel attempted to school his face into a neutral expression and kept his mouth shut. He and Raven hadn't been doing what he assumed Gar and Tara were doing at the time, but what they _were_ doing was no one else's business. Rejoining the group from his place near the far side of the room, Rob laughed and grinned at Kory. "I told you they were making out!"

Seconds after forcing Rob's head into a nearby steel bed frame, Raven shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

"Look at all the pretty sounds..." Rob was cut off mid-ramble by the bed frame suddenly rushing up to meet his head. Or maybe his head rushed down to meet the frame? At the moment, he was too dazed to care.

"Perhaps you should stop making friend Robert's head crash into random objects, he may need it later."

"I think it's an improvement," Noel mumbled, grinning.

Raven glowered. "He had his _hand_ on my _ass_... He's lucky to be breathing."

"But it was not entirely intentional! Rob was merely trying to explore the breach in reality."

"Wait, what breach?" Tim asked, echoing the sentiments of most of those in the room.

"I think Rob literally broke the fourth wall for a while there," Noel answered. "So Kory, why do you ask?"

Shrugging off her concern for Rob's cranium, Kory smiled. "I wanted to see if perhaps one of us did something to awaken our guest."

"Dude, wait... you think it was _us_?" Gar asked, glancing nervously at Tara.

"I think I see what she's getting at," said Tim, retrieving Nigel's pocket-med-gadget from his utility belt. "From what I first found out, she does have some sort of empathic power. It isn't completely outside of the realm of possibility. If anything, it may just be that because she's unconscious she isn't able to tune us all out, and just being around this many people may be a pain."

Nigel, who had remained fairly silent up until now, spoke up from his place over the machine testing their blood samples. "I have the results. We are all in perfect health," he announced, much to everyone's relief.

"Oh thank God," Tara sighed, throwing an arm around Gar and almost dancing.

Frowning, Noel turned his attention back to Tim. "So now what?"

"To the Batmobile!" Rob yelled, standing wobbly and walking from the room. They heard him fall down somewhere down the hall.

"We need answers, that much is certain. Nigel, about how long do you suppose it will be if we leave her alone?" Tim asked, tossing the alien back his medical toy.

"Honestly, I have no idea. Kory's suggestion that she may have some form of ability similar to that of the Tamaran race is supported by her earlier reactions, at least in theory. Then again, there are always more proven methods—I have some things in the medical bay that should wake a normal human."

"As much as I like the idea of embarrassing Tara and Gar, it's probably best to just let her sleep it off for the moment—and it might not be a good idea to pump someone like that full of chemicals when we have no idea how she'll react to them. In the meantime, why don't we go out for pizzas or something—I'm buying. This day's been pretty busy, so I suppose we could all use some time off," Tim suggested, standing and making his way to the door, followed by the rest of the team.

"I think I'm in the mood for Thai," Noel suggested.

A few paces behind him, Tara grinned. A night out on Tim usually had a tendency to degenerate into squabbling about what everyone wanted, and since Tim only agreed to pay if the others could agree to go to one place only, it usually wound up being pizza anyway. Still though, it couldn't hurt to ask. "Burgers sound good."

"Anything vegetarian."

"Dude, no way. We need real food."

"Chinese."

"No way. Mexican!"

"Will they serve the delicious yellow beverage?"

"Euck. I'll never get used to seeing that."

"What? Two bottles of mustard poured straight into a glass of coke?"

After the initial bickering about where to eat, the Titans had piled into the T-car and one of Tim's cars (Tim refused to let anyone else drive one since they had a bad habit of getting destroyed lately) and wound up at an all-you-can-eat pizza place. Later, they'd decided to let off some steam by catching a movie. It was well after midnight before they called it quits and headed for home. Well, everyone but Nigel left for the tower. He made a poor excuse about needing to get some night air and had taken off from the theatre—they all knew where he was going though. His relationship with the undertaker-slash-coroner-slash-metahuman wasn't exactly secret, though they tried to keep it low-key.

Taking a sip of water and swishing it around the inside of his mouth to catch all the used toothpaste and food particles, Tim spat into his bathroom sink before making several random faces at his reflection in the mirror in an attempt to make sure he hadn't missed anything obvious. Giving up, he flipped the light switch to the off position and made his way to his bed by memory and flopped down onto the sheets. A moment later, his bedroom door opened and a shaft of light from the hallway illuminated someone's form briefly before the door closed again.

'Kory,' Tim thought, smiling. He couldn't hear her moving around, which meant she was probably unconsciously hovering. This assumption proved correct a moment later when she landed atop him, knees to either side of his waist.

"Hello Tim."

"Hi K—" he attempted to greet, but was cut off mid-thought by a pair of lips closing over his. 'Bubble gum tooth paste...and a little mustard.'

After what seemed like a pleasurable eternity, Kory released Tim and simply lay there with the side of her face pressed against his. "It's too convenient, is it not?" she asked quietly, after a while.

"Mmm. You mean a girl that should be dead showing up with a deadly virus that isn't contagious? Or even deadly, for that matter, considering the fact that she's obviously alive and—as Nigel put it—almost too well to be normal?"

Kory shrugged. "I meant that I wound up here and found you... but I suppose you have a point."

Laughing, Tim ran his hands through her hair. "Sorry, I've just got a bad feeling about all this."

"Then let me take your mind off of it, my dear Tim."

Elsewhere in the Tower—Noel's room (for a change of scenery) and Tara's room (because Gar's was a mess, and he shed, though Tara didn't mind that... she thought it was cute, in an odd "Dude, so that's why my sheets are _green_" kind of way) to be exact, two other couples were also sharing intimate moments. Had they been able to hear Tim's statement to Kory, they might have wondered at the convenience of things as they were going as well.

Gar's tongue had somehow managed not to trip all over itself that evening every time he'd talked to Tara. For her part, Tara had gotten over her own embarrassment and frustration at being cut off in the middle of something that might have eventually led to something more later. The two had decided that they'd had enough excitement for one day and had selected a comedy out of Gar's collection at random—they needed a few good laughs to let off a bit more of the anxiety that had accumulated that day.

Raven and Noel were currently spooned under his sheets listening to soft strains of classical music and slowly drifting off to sleep—it seemed that, despite the fact that half of Noel's CD collection was missing; the classical stuff hadn't been removed.

Rob, being the only other person without someone to spend time with, had took it upon himself to watch Nigel's pocket-gizmo and make sure their guest didn't up and die in the middle of the night. The other Titans probably would have objected, but due either to some subtle nudge towards the flow of events or perhaps just blind dumb luck, none of them were actually aware that Rob had it—save for Nigel, who was currently not in the tower. Why Rob, anyway? Because Nigel knew that the other Titans were likely to be otherwise occupied, save for Victor, and he usually went offline for the better part of the night to recharge his batteries, as he was doing this night.

So it was that Robert Candide found himself parked in front of one of the televisions in the Titans' main living room playing a video game late into the night—Halo VI, upon closer inspection. It was probably sheer coincidence that the sound of the little monitor beeping like mad was drowned out by a conveniently timed explosion and Rob throwing Cheetos at the screen as his character was blown off the map. "Not again! I hate Legendary!"

Several floors and many rooms away, Kate's snoring—which had continued throughout the better part of the day—ceased. Rolling over into her stomach, she mumbled quietly under her breath. Had anyone been in the cell to see her face, they would have immediately noticed the pained look there. Eyes squinted shut and lips drawn down in a tight frown, she would have brought to mind someone who had gone to bed with a near-migraine headache which continued throughout the night. Despite the pain though, she was more capable of actually moving her limbs now—if only in her sleep. As Nigel had explained earlier that day, Kate had indeed drained her body completely of energy—almost to the point of death. Enough had returned not long after they'd gotten her back to the tower for her to roll over onto her side and snore like a band saw, but not much else. Nigel's estimate was also correct in that she wouldn't have awoken until late the next day, at best... but at the rate her strength was returning now, it looked like she would be waking up much sooner.

Noel quietly sipped from his cup, reading the second page of the morning paper. The cup itself—one of a set of custom mugs Robin had purchased for the team which proclaimed "Teen Titans!" on one side and "Savior" on the other (with a stylized 'S' in the bottom of the cup)—wasn't out of the ordinary...the contents of said cup were though. Normally, Noel didn't drink coffee, but this morning seemed to call for it.

"Titans once again defeat sludge monster," Noel read. The Titans weren't usually front-page material—not that it mattered a damn to him. He loathed the media and if it meant not having to put up with their crap, Noel would gladly never have anything to do with them again. Further down the page, a related article caught his eye. "Driver claims Titan knocked him unconscious and stole his truck." This had 'Gauntlet' written all over it in big flashing neon letters.

Several moments later, Raven stumbled blearily into the kitchen—clad in one of his shirts, a pair of his boxers, and not much else—followed shortly by Tim and Kory, though Kory's Pikachu slippers and pink Hamtaro pajamas were a relatively more common sight than Raven walking around in borrowed clothes. Using the Shimmer, Noel passed Raven a cup of tea as she sat down beside him. "What time is it, and why am I up again?" she mumbled quietly before sipping.

"Nine thirteen," Noel answered, almost laughing as Kory nearly poured her chocolate syrup (for her milk, of course) into her bowl of what appeared to be Rob's Lucky Charms. It took Tim two tries to convince Kory that the cup was on the other side of her bowl before he sat down. "And you're up because you set the alarm for nine."

The four were joined shortly by Victor who rummaged about in one of the cabinets until he came across his own personal mug—triple the size of the others—and poured what was left of Noel's pot of coffee into it. Vic sat down, only raising an eyebrow at Raven's attire but not quite daring to comment on it. "Why's everyone so quiet?"

"Probably because half of us are dead tired," Noel answered.

Victor grinned. "Whose fault is that?"

Raven mumbled something about not sleeping well, covertly pointing towards Noel and miming snoring. A moment later, Rob stumbled in from the direction of the living room. Glancing around, he spotted Kory's bowl—which looked to be filled entirely with tiny marshmallows. "My Lucky Charms!"

One of Tim's eyes twitched. Looking up and back towards the counter, he found the offending box. Two blinks later, the box was pinned against the wall—a Birdarang embedded into Lucky's head. "Rob—no more buying cereal that has enough sugar in it to jumpstart a corpse."

"But I like the marshmallows."

"Marshmallows are tasty," Kory agreed fuzzily, her eyes only half-open by this point.

Rob had just taken his own seat at the table when the bell announcing the elevator sounded from near the living room, meaning someone had just entered from downstairs. "Nigel?" Tim asked and was answered by a resounding 'Yes!' from somewhere in the middle of the living room.

Nigel strolled into the kitchen a moment later, followed by none other than Jason Blood. "Look what the Blacktrinian dragged in," he greeted, heading straight for the refrigerator and looking for anything not moving too quickly that he couldn't hold it down long enough to bite into it.

"Hello, Titans," Blood himself greeted, taking in the six at the table. "What an interesting costume selection you have this morning," he smirked dryly, declining an offer from Nigel for something that looked to be squirming.

Raven stood and made as dignified an exit as she could—considering her state of dress. Kory didn't so much as bat an eye. Upon closer inspection, this was probably due to the fact that her eyes were already closed and she appeared to be quite asleep. Tim nudged her elbow. When this didn't get her attention, he stood and hefted her into his arms. "Nigel, Noel—show Jason down to our guest. I'll join you in a few minutes."

The two addressed Titans stood (well, Noel stood as he had been the only one out of the two actually sitting) and did as their leader asked, as Tim took Kory back to his bedroom so she could get some extra sleep. She was drooling on his arm by the time he made it through the door, so he doubted she would be awake again any time soon.

Lacking anything better to do, Vic and Rob tagged along as they led Blood back to the elevator. "Rob, where is my...?" Nigel asked, remembering he had left one of his favorite toys behind with _Rob_ of all people.

"...Uh.. right! Hang on!" Rob ducked back into the living room and dug around through the Titans' massive pile of miscellaneous gaming material before coming up with the widget in question. He tossed it in Nigel's general direction while he ran to catch up, never considering that it might be a bad idea to toss a fairly heavy hunk of plastic and circuitry without bothering to look. Besides, it looked as though it was going to hit Noel in the back of the head, and that was always good.

A Shimmer line caught the device and handed it over to the doctor as they stepped into the elevator. Turning to regard Rob—who was grinning like an idiot—Noel pressed the 'emergency close' button on the panel beside him. Rob's eyes widened as he realized what Noel had done, but it was too late and the doors slammed closed in front of his face just before he would have stepped through. Rob's yell of "Noel! That isn't fair!" was thankfully muted by the elevator.

They reached the level for the medical lab and the few isolation cells there. These cells, while not exactly prisoner cells as they were built more for patients with contagious diseases (or those who didn't need to catch them), had served their purpose well enough in the past. Nigel disabled the containment field around the cell before he and Blood entered. "Where did you find her?" he asked.

Tim answered from down the hall as he, Rob, and Raven—in her costume—made their way back to the group. "Noel found her wandering out of an alleyway in the middle of a battle."

"She was completely out of it when I found her—looked like she'd gone without food or water for the past two or more days. Rob thinks she walked here from somewhere around Metropolis, and the data we collected seems to back that up," Noel clarified, ignoring Rob who was mimicking him as he spoke.

"She has the smell of death about her," Blood commented softly, stepping closer and lifting one of her wrists, upon which was a pair of thin, silvery bracelets covered almost entirely in tiny runes. A glance over revealed an identical pair on her other wrist.

Victor grinned, noticing that she was still dressed in her clothes from the other day, which were covered in an all-too-familiar dried black gunk. "Could just be Mortimer you smell."

"No," Nigel denied, recognizing the scent Mr. Blood was referring to—it was one he knew well. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it sooner. "She smells faintly of some of the stronger chemicals used in a morgue."

"Makes sense—she is listed as legally dead, though there was no coroner's report," Tim acknowledged. "It didn't look like there were any scars from an autopsy though—at least not that I saw. Nigel?"

Nigel shook his head and would have confirmed Tim's statement, had the girl on the bed not suddenly ceased snoring, jerked her hand away from Jason Blood, and almost flown across the room in her haste to get away. She wound up sitting against the far wall (though that wasn't very far at all, as it was a fairly small cell), one hand pointed palm-forward in Blood's general direction as she closed her eyes and yelled something Nigel couldn't make out.

Rob's gauntlet activated and he threw up a shield as Noel made a dive away, Victor armed his sonic cannon, and Tim crouched and instinctively drew a Birdarang. After a full five seconds with no destructive blasts of energy, magic, or otherwise, the Titans managed to bring themselves most of the way down off of their battle readiness. Blood, being the closest, knelt down a bit closer, raising his hands in the universal 'we mean thee no harm' gesture. "Calm yourself child, we aren't going to harm you," he said quietly, his deep voice convincing her to open her eyes.

Glancing around the room, her eyes fixed on the hand she held pointed Blood's direction. Her eyebrows raised in confusion as to just what she had planned to do with it and why exactly it was there. "Uhh..." she mumbled, dropping the hand.

"Do you know where you are?" Tim asked as Nigel quickly strode past him and around the corner of the cell, trying not to draw attention to himself.

"No? Where am I?"

Noel, recovered from his attempt to clear the possible blast area, answered. "You're in Jump City. Did you walk all the way here from Metropolis?"

Frowning, Kate searched her memory of the previous days. "I guess so, if that's where I woke up."

"What do you mean?" Raven asked, noticing that something about the way she answered seemed decidedly...off.

"I don't know. I just woke up and I was really cold. I found these clothes nearby and just started walking from there."

Tim glanced between Raven and Blood before asking, "You didn't see or speak to anyone?"

"Nope. You're the first people I've seen. Who are all of you, anyway?" she answered, taking a closer look at those gathered.

"Wait, let me get this straight," Tim started, attempting to clarify the situation of events. "You woke up in a morgue—"

"In or near a freezer," Nigel tossed out from the hallway.

"Right. You woke up in or near a morgue freezer, got up, found some clothes nearby, left the morgue without meeting a single person, and made your way here—also without meeting anyone—where you then stumbled through an alleyway and right into a battle with Mortimer, were nearly painted across a wall, and then used your powers to completely destroy the monster?"

"Uhh... mostly. There was this really nice guy I met who gave me food and let me ride some of the way here! But that was a while ago," she added, not having any reference of time to be able to tell exactly when it had happened. "And who's Mortimer? And I did what? I don't remember any of that."

Raven blinked. "You don't remember using the glowing...things to wipe out a giant, flaming monster composed entirely of mostly-flammable sludge?"

"Nunuh."

"Riiiiiight."

"I don't, really! I—" she paused as her stomach growled audibly. Glancing down, she grinned. "Guess I'm kind of hungry," she admitted sheepishly before noticing that her clothes were mostly covered in dried gunk...and something about her head didn't feel quite like it had for the past few days. "Ugh, what is this?!"

Rob grinned, speaking up for the first time since she'd awoken. "That would be Mortimer."

"...I'm covered in it! And it smells," she whined, making a face.

"Ok. Raven, could you see about getting her into one of the showers. I'll go see if I can find her some clothes that might fit. Gauntlet... No, Cy, think you can scratch up something to eat?" Tim asked, turning to leave the room.

"Um, I don't know Fearless—that might be a bit harder than it sounds. I could order something."

Tim nodded as Victor and Nigel followed him to the elevator. "That'll work."

Sighing, Raven rolled her eyes. 'It can't be helped for the moment, I suppose,' she thought, motioning for Kate to follow.

"Why can't I cook?" Rob asked of no one in particular, following everyone else to the elevator that was just returning from wherever it had taken Tim and the others.

"I don't know Gauntlet, why _can't_ you cook?" Noel asked sarcastically, earning a glare from the other teen.

"That wasn't my fault! It caught fire all by itself!"

Trying to get rid of her soiled clothes without actually touching the dried crud splotches all over them proved to be more difficult than Kate had initially thought it would be. Finally deciding that she was going to shower anyway, she gave up and pulled them off before throwing them as far away as she could. Looking around, she picked a shower stall at random and stepped in, closing the door. "Ok, I'm good!" she called to the girl on the other side of the bathroom door—Raven was her name?

Opening the door, Raven found the discarded pile of filth and wrinkled her nose. 'There isn't a chance in hell that I'm touching those,' she grimaced, using her power to levitate the pile of refuse. "There should be soap and shampoo in the stall. I'll come back and check on you in a few minutes, so don't wander."

Raven left the bathroom, nearly bumping into Tim as he placed a pair of faded jeans and an orange t-shirt just inside the door. He noticed the black-encased ball of old clothes and grinned. "Going to wash them, or just save time and use fire?"

"I was considering burning them, though if Rob opens another hole in the fourth wall, I may just shove them through... who knows, I may get lucky and they might fall out on top of Jinx or someone. After I push him through first."

Turning the shower knobs, Kate sighed as the filth was washed away from her body. "So much better," she mumbled, rinsing her hair out. That's when she noticed that, unlike when she had woken up the first time, this time her hair was short. "I wonder what happened to it." Running her hands through it, she found that it was actually longer in the front than in the back now, as though someone had hastily lopped everything else off. She shrugged, deciding that it didn't matter.

She looked around for the soap that Raven had mentioned earlier, knowing that simply standing under the stream of water wasn't going to cut it. She found a palm-sized blue bar and a green topped bottle covered in symbols she couldn't make out (it read that yes, it was indeed shampoo, and gave instructions on how to use it but none on when to stop). She grabbed the bar first, bringing it under the stream of warm water. It immediately became covered in thick, foamy bubbles. Kate gave it an experimental squeeze and was surprised when it flew from her hand, struck the wall, bounced off, and hit her knee before coming to rest on the shower floor. "Ok... That was fun. Let's try it again."

Several minutes later, she stepped out of the stall feeling much better than when she'd first got in. She found a towel and the clothes that had been set out for her, noticing that there weren't any socks or shoes there. That didn't really bother her though—the last pair of shoes she had worn didn't seem to fit quite right. She didn't take into account that she had only four toes on each foot and that normal shoes were made with people with one more per foot in mind. Why would she? Hers were the only feet she'd ever laid eyes on—that she knew of, anyway.

Getting dressed, she used her fingers to brush her hair out of her eyes. She stepped outside of the bathroom and glanced around. "Now what?" she wondered, remembering that the other girl had told her not to wander. The insistent tug (something akin to that of a small child pulling on one's arm) that had first woken her up and driven her to walk the majority of the distance between Metropolis and Jump without stopping for food, water, or sleep had finally relented and now she felt a bit lost.

Kate sat in the hallway, leaning against the wall next to the bathroom door. She could wait. Glancing down, she once again noticed the two pairs of bracelets adorning her wrists. They looked and felt as though they would slip right past her wrist and over her hands should she just hold her hand at the right angle, but that assumption had been proven wrong not long ago when she had attempted to remove one to wash the skin under it. The moment it had brushed the skin behind her thumb, it had stopped moving, as though it were too tight to go any further, so she had given up and simply poked a corner of the washcloth she had used underneath them.

A voice from up the hallway interrupted any further rumination she might have had. "Come on, we're going up."

"I want to take her back with me for a few days."

Tim paused halfway into the Titans' living room, turning around to regard Jason Blood. "Any particular reason?"

Jason gave a short, enigmatic smile before taking a seat in one of the many chairs. "Nothing specific, yet."

"Anything we should know about?" Tim asked, sitting as well. Most of the rest of the team had gathered, save for Gar, Tara, and Kory who were sleeping still (all of whom had a habit of sleeping until noon or later when they could), and Raven who was presumably off starting a small fire.

"You'll know as soon as we know."

Tim nodded. "Ok. Well, as long as you're sure, it's fine by us."

"Robin," said Scalpel from—of all places—the ceiling. He'd decided to indulge in this habit for a few moments to get a new perspective on one of their current problems, and he believed he had a solution. "I would like to attempt to draw more blood. If I could get someone to assist later, we could wrap a vial in cloth or something and perhaps send a sample to Star Labs—with explicit warnings not to expose it directly to light, of course."

Standing, Victor made his way to the elevator. "Delivery guy's here, I'll be right back."

"You think she'll go with you?" Noel asked.

"I don't believe she really has a reason not to."

"What does Etrigan have to say about all this?"

Blood frowned. "Not much."

Nearby, the elevator door opened to reveal not Victor, but Raven and the Titans'—and soon to be Blood's—guest. Raven stepped out, looking mildly annoyed. "Problem?" Tim asked, reading her look.

"Two, actually," Raven confirmed. "The clothes refused to catch fire."

This drew more than a few snickers. "What was the other?" asked Noel. His question was answered when Raven stepped to the side to reveal Kate—her hair was streaked with green, whereas it had been solidly black earlier. "Rob."

Rob, who had been napping on the couch, sat up quickly. "Huh?"

Noel pointed towards Kate. "Who was that for?"

Glancing towards their guest, Rob grinned. "Why are you blaming me?"

"Because you're the only one who would put green dye in someone's shampoo," Raven answered accusingly.

"No I'm not! Gar would too, if I hadn't have beaten him to it...er, oops."

"Green?" Kate asked, grabbing a strand of hair and pulling it into her line of sight. "Why is my hair green?"

Tim blinked. "You didn't notice earlier?"

"When?"

"You had to have looked in a mirror—there are at least three in that bathroom," Raven pointed out.

Kate shook her head, her hair returning to its original position. "Nope. It doesn't bother me though. It was long when I woke up the first time and short when I woke up the second time, so I suppose having it turn green in the shower is to be expected."

Noel frowned, picking up on her choice of wording. "How many times did you stop to rest on your way here?"

"I didn't," she answered honestly.

"So not only did you not stop to eat or drink anything on your way here, you also forgot to sleep?" he asked cautiously.

Kate shook her head. "I didn't forget—I just didn't want to."

"Anyone else here notice how that's physically impossible?"

"It is?"

Their questions were interrupted by the elevator sliding open again and Victor stepping out this time with a couple of cartons of Chinese food, a bag from a nearby burger joint, and a box of tacos and burritos balanced atop a pizza box. "I didn't know what you'd eat, so I ordered a little of everything," he announced, placing the pile of food atop the table after Raven used her powers to clear a spot off.

Rob looked longingly at the boxes and bags. He reached for the box of Mexican, only to have his hand slapped away halfway there. Somehow, Kate had managed to get past Raven, around Victor, and was now hunched possessively over the stack of food—all in the span of less than a second. "Mine!" she growled before digging into the closest thing. Rob's kicked-puppy look went unnoticed by the other Titans as they watched her devouring everything there.

Tim went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a bottle of soda, which he offered almost-warily—he didn't know what would happen should he get within grabbing distance. "Here. I'm Robin," he offered, introducing himself and motioning for the others to do the same.

"Savior."

"Cyborg."

"Gauntlet!"

"Scalpel," Nigel called from the ceiling. This earned a quick glance his direction before she dug back into the food. Raven and Jason Blood remained silent.

Pausing long enough to draw breath, Kate asked a question. "When do I get a cool name? Wait," she paused, thinking. "Do I have a name?"

Rob stood from his place on the couch and yelled at the nearest wall. "Come on! Don't tell me the author is going that low! The 'amnesia card' is the oldest plot device in the book." A second later, Rob's head found itself flattened against the table—dangerously near Kate's pile of food. A second after that, he found himself back on the couch—an imprint of Kate's bracelets plainly outlined in red across his forehead. "Oww, why me?"

"Despite the fact that Gauntlet seems determined to break the fourth wall, he has a point. Considering everything else, it is a little unbelievable. Please tell me he's wrong," Tim pleaded, silently hoping that would be the case.

Hand halfway to mouth, Kate paused. "Ok. He's wrong."

Tim sweat-dropped. "Did you do that just because I asked you to?"

"Mhmm," she mumbled around a mouthful of food.

Raven sighed—the longer she stayed around this girl, the more annoyed she seemed to get. "Do you remember anything before waking up in the morgue?"

Pausing to think, Kate shook her head. "Nope. So I don't have a name?"

"'Kate Rivers.' Does that ring any bells?" Noel asked, mildly annoyed himself. Things just made less sense the more time went by.

"No. I don't have any bells! These clink, but they don't ring," she answered, waving one hand so that the bracelets clicked together. "So I'm Kate?"

Everyone save for Jason Blood face-vaulted—and Nigel fell from his place on the ceiling. Somehow managing to be the first to regain his footing, Victor regarded the girl skeptically. "Fourth wall breaking aside, what the hell is the author on?"

"What's a fourth wall?"

Nigel, digging his face out of the carpet, answered first. "It is the boundary between the real and the outlandishly absurd—a very much abused boundary as of late."

"How come you didn't smash Cyborg's head into something?" Rob complained, jumping back over the couch and sitting—somehow, he had managed to fall behind it.

Glaring at Rob, Raven answered tersely. "Because Cyborg didn't put a literal hole in the wall, nor did he put his hand through it and _grab_ my **_ass_**."

"So that's what that was?"

"Yes Rob, what did you think it was?"

Scratching his head, Rob shrugged. "I don't know. So anyway, before we wind up giving me a concussion..."

Producing a folded printout, Tim tossed it in front of Kate. "You are Kate, unless everything there is wrong."

Kate unfolded the piece of paper and gave it the once-over. On it were printed more of the funny squiggly lines, along with a black and white picture of a girl from the shoulders up, rolling her eyes at the camera and poking the tip of her tongue out from the side of her mouth. She might have laughed at the absurdity of her own driver's license photo...had she understood the concept. "This is me?" she asked, turning the paper around so Tim could see and pointing at the picture.

Glancing between the girl and her photo (just to be on the safe side and make sure there wasn't actually someone _else's_ picture there), Noel nodded. "Yes."

"What's it say?"

"...You're fucking **kidding** me!" Raven half growled-half yelled, startling almost everyone present.

Glancing back at the scary dusky-skinned girl, Kate shook her head. "Nope."

"Arg!" Raven ground out. Snatching the printout from the other girl's hands, she read its contents aloud. "'Kate Rivers: born November 1, 19; age: 19; sex: female; height: 5'2"; weight: 109; hair: black; eyes: green, gold? that can't be right," she paused, leaning in close enough to get a good look at the eyes in question—light green with a thin wavy patch of what was clearly a shade of brown light enough to be called gold set mid-distant between the outer rim and the black of her iris. "I guess it is. Blood type: O-; organ donor; special note: born without last toe on both feet and umbilical; date of death..."

The next-to-the-last statement drew everyone's attention (save for Tim and Nigel, who had already seen both) to the bare feet in question. Feeling nervous under such close scrutiny, Kate attempted to pull her feet under her legs. "What?"

"BB has green fur and Scalpel had metal covered talons for hands and feet... this is nowhere near weird enough to chart on my weird-shit-o-meter," Victor commented, grinning.

"So that piece of paper said all of that?" Kate asked before pointing towards the paper still clutched in Raven's fists.

The fists clutched the paper harder. "Yes. And if you don't remember anything, how do you know it's a piece of paper?"

Kate shrugged and began pointing at random objects around the room. "I don't know. I know that's a table, a chair, a soda can, a book," her finger landed on Rob before continuing, "a moron, I don't know what the big box with the glass front is... but I know it's glass!"

"You know," Noel grinned, glancing at Tim. "I'd be willing to have her stick around simply for entertainment value."

Kate paused in her listing, turning to regard Noel and Tim. "I can stay?"

"Actually," Jason Blood spoke up, drawing her attention. "I would like you to come with me back to Gotham for a few days—if you don't mind, that is."

"What's a Gotham? And I can stay with you?"

Blood nodded. "Yes, you would be more than welcome to. And Gotham is a city."

"Oh. ...I think I know what a city is too."

"That is good," Jason commended her, somehow managing not to sound condescending as he did so. "We should get going soon—it is a long drive. Was there something you needed to take care of beforehand?" he asked, glancing towards Nigel.

"Oh, yes! I will be right back," said the alien, dashing for the elevator. He returned several moments later carrying the things necessary for drawing blood. "Does anyone have a dark cloth?"

Reaching into a pocket in her cape, Raven produced a black handkerchief. Noting a couple of confused looks (mainly from Rob and Kate), she explained. "It's for evidence with finger prints that I wouldn't want to smear or otherwise contaminate, either with my hands or my power."

Accepting the kerchief, Nigel crouched beside Kate and took hold of her arm. "This may hurt a little," he warned before sliding the needle into a vein. Kate flinched a bit, but not enough to dislodge it. "Savior, the lights?" A Shimmer line snaked out and flipped the light switch to the off position and Nigel depressed the switch that would draw blood into the vial. Hearing it a click indicative that it was full and sealed, he then removed the vial and carefully wrapped it in the cloth. "Done."

The lights came back on and the Blacktrinian handed the wrapped vial over to Tim, who pocketed it within his utility belt. "Is that everything?" he asked, wanting to make sure they weren't forgetting to do or ask something important before Blood left with the idiosyncrasy currently sitting on their floor and playing with a coke cap as if it were suddenly the most entertaining thing in the world.

Seeing no objections, Jason stood and offered his hand to Kate then pulled her onto her feet a moment later. "Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed this visit. I will keep you informed, Titans. Coming?" he asked of the girl beside him.

"Uh, sure?" she asked questioningly, glancing around at the others once more.

Just as they neared the elevator, Rob remembered something. "Hey! What about shoes?"

Kate glanced down at her feet, and then shrugged. "I won't need them any time soon."

"Oh..."

Blood stepped into the elevator, followed by Kate (who skipped, more than stepped), and the two made their way out of Titan Tower. The drive back to Jason's private manor was mostly uneventful, save for Kate glancing back in the direction they'd come more frequently the further away they got. "It's tugging," she mumbled, referring to the odd sensation that had brought her this far.

Jason noticed, but didn't comment. At this close proximity, he could almost feel exactly what she was talking about. 'I wonder what this girl's appearance portends for the Titans and what would wish to resurrect a dead child and draw her straight to them...'

I have my reasons for using the 'amnesia card.' Expect a lot of Blood and some more violence in the next chapter, though nothing quite that punny.


	3. Nine Days of Hell

The Disclaimer - I don't own Teen Titans or the other original characters portrayed within this work of fan fiction save for Kate Rivers. And since I'm tired of repeating myself, there will no longer be disclaimers. Take that American legal system! Now, let the insanity commence. Oh, and no more third wall breaking of the previous caliber, I promise.

**Gods' Playground**

03 - Nine Days of Hell

Life in Titan Tower returned to as close as it ever got to 'normal' in the following days. For the most part, thoughts of the supposed-amnesiac rarely—if ever—crossed the Titans' minds. They hadn't heard back from Star Labs after sending them Kate's blood sample. The only thing regarding the girl that was of any importance were the results to the speech-pattern analysis Tim ran through Oracle, from when she first awoke. The recording had been sent to several linguistic experts and all but one had been utterly confounded.

"She's saying 'get away.'"

Tim had garnered as much, but the question still remained... "Yeah, but in what language?"

Dr. Anne Polanski—PhD, graduate of Harvard, and researcher of dead languages for nearly thirty years—had been just as baffled upon first hearing the recording as everyone else, that is until she'd somehow stumbled onto what amounted to a breakthrough. "It's ancient Macedonian—a language that hasn't been spoken by man since well before the time of the ancient Egyptians."

"So it's old."

"Very. Where did you find a girl that could speak it?"

Tim suppressed a groan. "Don't ask."

Dr. Polanski grinned. "Fine, fine. But I would very much like to meet this mysterious young girl. She does speak English?"

"Yeah, for all that's worth."

"Hmm?"

Deciding that elaborating a little wouldn't hurt, Tim did so. "We think she's an amnesiac... that, or she's a half-decent actor. We've got proof she attended a public high school, but based on her actions I don't think she can read."

Anne laughed. "Well, you supplied yourself with the answer as to why she can't just now."

"The public school system does suck," Tim agreed, grinning. "But I doubt that has anything to do with it."

"Well Robin, I have to get back to work. The slave driver here keeps us on a tight schedule. It was interesting talking to you. If, by chance, you come across her again... do you think you could send her my way?"

"We'll see. Take care, and thanks again."

"Oh, you're very welcome."

Tim hung up then gave his chair a half-spin before getting up. "Macedonian..."

Let's go back a bit to Kate's first day with Jason Blood...

After showing the girl to a spare bedroom and making sure she was properly fed and washed, Blood had sent her to bed before retiring for the evening himself. Tomorrow, he would begin to delve into just what made the walking idiosyncrasy tick.

As for Kate—she hadn't so much decided to go to sleep as her body had decided for her, and she literally passed out the moment she hit the sheets. Being only the second (not counting the first time, since she didn't remember actually going to sleep) time she could ever remember sleeping, she was unaccustomed to dreaming. She didn't have the presence of mind to question the phenomenon though, and the majority of them were forgotten upon waking the next morning, but a sliver of one did manage to stick...

"_You are dying."_

"_Yes."_

"_You wish to start over?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Form a pact with me and be reborn in death."_

Kate sat up in bed quickly, the word 'pact' forming on and leaving her lips without her realizing it. Only a moment later though she flopped back down with a sigh. The first rays of daylight were beginning to peek through the curtains of an unfamiliar room and it took her a moment to remember where she was. As soon as she knew that, an insistent tugging at her wrist directed her to stand. Her arm jerked forward, leading her to the door, which she opened before following the sensation down the hall, down a flight of stairs, and through several rooms until she reached a large dining room.

"Good morning," Jason Blood greeted from his place at the end of the table. He hadn't expected her to be up so early, but since she was, he might as well get started immediately.

The tugging at her arm abated—content to leave her alone for the moment. "Uh... hi—Jason was it?" she asked, thinking back to the events of the previous day.

Blood nodded. "Yes. Have a seat," he waved towards the many chairs surrounding the dining table.

Shrugging, Kate chose the seat closest to the man's right. She started to speak, ask exactly what she was expected to do here, but was cut off as her stomach loudly insisted that it was empty and would like something to fill it, please. "Got anything to eat?"

"Certainly," Jason smiled, standing and leading the way into a small kitchen off to the side of the dining room. "Is there anything in particular you would like?"

"Should there be?"

Blood chuckled once, softly. "I suppose not. Eggs then? I make a mean omelet," he offered, receiving a response somewhere between a shrug and a nod. When he finished preparing the meal, he watched as the girl ate like a man starved for days—but that was understandable. When she finished, he took her plate and placed it in his sink. "Well then, shall we get started?"

"With what?"

"I shall explain along the way," he replied, walking from the room.

Kate followed, curious to know just what was going on. "Where are we going?"

"You will see. How much do you know about yourself, Kate?"

She shrugged, thinking back to the previous day. "My name is Kate, I have green eyes and black hair—though now it's partly green, I think... Is it?"

"It is," Jason agreed, leading her deeper into his home. "But that isn't what I meant."

"Oh," she replied, sounding disappointed.

"What I meant to ask is: do you know what makes you who you are? What do you possess that separates Kate Rivers from everyone else in the world?"

"What makes me... _me?_" she repeated quietly. She was quiet for a moment before finally giving up. "I don't know. What do I have?"

Jason smiled—he had known she wouldn't be able to answer. He—Jason Blood—was one of the three (or so) oldest humans on the planet and he still didn't have the answer to that question. He had asked it simply to put the idea into her head that perhaps she should look more closely at herself. "You should think more on it, later. Do you remember your first meeting with the Titans?"

Kate nodded. "Of course. You woke me up and I jumped off the bed and they looked ready to..." she paused.

"To...?"

The thought slipped her mind. "I—uh... I don't know. Something not good?"

"Indeed. They were preparing to defend themselves, should you attack."

"Attack? With what? Why?"

Jason turned a corner, heading down a flight of stairs. "That is what I hope to find out."

"Why?"

"You have something somewhere inside of yourself that worries them. That was not the first time you met them, you see."

Kate frowned. She didn't remember anything between 'going to sleep' somewhere in Jump City and waking up in Titan Tower. "It wasn't? When did I? Was it when I first came to the city? I don't remember any of what happened after running into an alleyway..."

Jason nodded, making another turn. "Yes—from what I gather, you became unconscious at some point during their battle. Shortly thereafter, while their medic was examining you, you woke up again and did something they later described as impossible."

"It was a good thing though, right?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not," he replied. They were drawing nearer their destination. "I want you to do it again."

Kate blinked. "Why? Can I?"

"Possibly. I want—" Blood paused mid-sentence. Something was amiss. Further away—inside a box no mortal but he could touch, protected by a room covered in wards and spells from floor to ceiling, guarded by a hallway with even more enchantments—shards of something once great (though those same shards were great in and of themselves) stirred briefly, then went silent as if nothing had happened. Glancing back at his charge, Jason noted that a few of the tiny runes covering one of her bracelets were glowing a soft orange. He continued on. "I would like to see it for myself and perhaps teach you how to use it."

"What do I have to do?"

"Not much."

Shrugging, Kate rubbed her wrist. It had felt like something had twitched there, but the feeling was gone now. "Will it be easy?"

Jason grinned. "Not at all. Nothing worth anything ever comes easily—you might want to remember that."

"Ok."

They reached a set of double doors and he pulled them open. "We are here," he stated, leading her into the room and past a pedestal. On the other side of the room stood another door, this one just a single door and not a set of two. "Do you want to go through with this?"

"I don't know," she answered quietly. A tug on her arm, gentler and not quite as insistent this time, changed her mind. "Yes. I want to know."

Jason, despite Etrigan's insistence that he turn the girl over into his 'care,' spent the next several hours attempting to convince Kate to draw upon her power—with no success. Convincing her to tap into whatever power resided within her wouldn't be as simple as just making a few suggestions, or even teaching her as he would normal students...that is, should he have any. Though, perhaps in retrospect, it would be—the circumstances simply weren't right. In any case, Jason had expected some lack of progress. Finally though, Etrigan's insistence that treating her delicately wasn't going to cut it won out. Blood decided to resort to violence. Perhaps catching her off guard would force her to react.

Kate was becoming mildly frustrated. How was she supposed to use something she couldn't feel, sense, and didn't even really know for sure was there? With a sigh, the closed her eyes and rubbed them gently with her fingers... and then the sound of chanting reached her ears. She had almost turned around completely when the runes on one of the bracelets—this time on the opposite wrist as opposed to the last time—flared an angry red and the metal band began to shudder slightly. A fierce wind caught her attention before she could look however, and she managed to catch the last of Jason's chant.

Suddenly, Kate found herself flattened face-first against the far wall—a tremendous pressure holding her there like a giant's hand. She couldn't move—she couldn't _breathe!_ After a moment though, whatever force was holding her in place let go, and Kate fell to the floor. Lying there face up she rolled her eyes towards the only other person in the room. "Why did you do that?" she groaned.

Jason didn't answer. Instead, he silently tapped into one of his magic abilities which would mimic telepathy and invaded her mind. His intent was to simply stir things up a bit—the mental equivalent of grabbing a person and giving them a hard shake. The reaction was instantaneous.

Kate shuddered and curled into a ball, hands clutching her head and eyes squeezed shut. "Get out," she whimpered quietly.

Jason ignored her pleas applied more pressure.

"Get out, get out, getoutgetoutgetout..." her body was starting to convulse violently at this point. Vessels ruptured and blood dripped quickly from her nose, pooling onto the floor where it began to crystallize. Her arm was being tugged at again. "Please, make it stop."

Frowning, Jason redoubled his efforts. He knew he was getting dangerously close to causing serious permanent damage, but his instincts told him she would react soon.

Kate's ears and eyes began to drip as well and she could feel herself slipping. She would pass out soon if he didn't stop. Why was Jason doing this? He had been so nice earlier—perhaps she had been wrong in trusting him and coming here. Perhaps she had been wrong in waking up at all...

'_No. Stand.'_

Kate stood. Eyes opened wide and her head jerked upwards—she gave into whatever force had guided her thus far. "Get out of _my HEAD_!" the normally soft-spoken girl roared, dual crest flaring to brilliant orange life above her eyes before fading out again. That didn't matter though... she had power now—if only for a moment—and she knew how to use it...and her wounds were gone. Bringing up her fist, she thrust it towards the one invading her mind.

Blood smiled when he felt the force of the girl's attack. Had Etrigan been standing in his place, the demon would have found himself buried chest deep in the far wall—of the next room, simply because Jason had prepared several spells to defend against such attacks and didn't really feel like mending broken ribs today. He stopped his own attack.

The blood crystals on her face had begun to flake off now, but Kate didn't notice. She had a killer headache, and she was tired—very, very tired. She wanted nothing more than to go back to that comfortable bed upstairs and rest for the next three days. "Please don't make me do that again," she mumbled, not knowing exactly what it was she had done, but accepting that she had done it nonetheless.

'Her power manifested itself as telekinesis this time,' Blood thought towards his companion. 'That was nothing like what was described to me by Raven. The only corresponding details are the fact that she was in pain when it happened and the markings that preceded her attack.'

Etrigan responded that he didn't care much about what the half-demon had said—he just wanted to see more of what this child could offer. Perhaps she would prove entertaining. Asking Jason once more for the opportunity to 'help,' Etrigan was mildly surprised when Jason relented—but only mildly so. He knew that Blood hadn't exactly enjoyed that. He, on the other hand, had no such qualms.

A brief chant and a burst of hellfire later and Jason Blood was replaced by the demon Etrigan. Grinning, Etrigan hefted the girl in one massive fist by the scruff of her neck. "Upon your luck you do rely, if you continue you shall die, even the beasts with instinct strong, without practice do not last long. The power that leaves you quaking, is truly yours for the taking, if I cannot teach you with my yelling, perhaps you'll find this impact telling!"

He casually tossed her the length of the room, where she rolled to a stop against the wall. She stayed down. "Offer prayer to that you revere, I promise none shall interfere, until I see your full potential, your pain will grow 'most exponential."

Her response would have disturbed anyone listening—anyone but Etrigan. Kate laughed. It wasn't very hard, or for very long, but it was laughter nonetheless. It was a type of laugh the demon was familiar with: that of the damned—those who accept their fate and willingly give in. "Do your worst—I've got nothing left! I can barely _move_, let alone do...**that** again." It was true, she was barely awake and everything hurt and she just wanted to lie down and die.

"I found your mirth most insulting, you think that it will be resulting, in pity from a demon heart? If you think that, a fool thou art! I grow weary of repetition, but I suppose in your condition, you need a reminder of you position, well listen well to this exposition! Stand now and fight, as I said before, or I'll beat you 'til you'll WISH you were sore!" Etrigan growled, kicking her in the general direction of the center of the room.

'Maybe laughing at it wasn't such a good idea,' she thought randomly, spitting up blood and watching it begin to solidify. 'I wonder why it does that.'

Kate's train of thought, admittedly pretty shaky at the moment, was further derailed when the demon decided to pick her up again. This time, instead of simply throwing her, he loosed a punch into her stomach—albeit a very weak one. He didn't want to tear the girl in half after all. No, he had much more in store for her than that. Still, the punch was enough to bruise her ribs and send her tumbling elbows-over-ass, as he'd let go the moment his fist had connected.

When she came to a stop this time, she somehow managed to speak again. "I told you—I can't do it again. I don't know how I did it the first time!"

"My patience is a fading ember, come on now, you MUST remember!"

"Do whatever you want. I'm tired of playing," she sighed, closing her eyes.

Etrigan growled. Humans with pathetic attitudes really got on his nerves. It was time to teach the girl a lesson. "If you seek to throw away your life, then let me provide fire of strife! You'll wish you'd resisted, this I do tell, when you play with the truly CRUEL demons in hell!" With that, he opened his maw and began slowly drawing forth hellfire, giving her plenty of time to react to her oncoming demise.

This close to the demon, Kate could feel its annoyance (along with the intense heat radiating from the general vicinity of its mouth), spite, and deep-set rage... and for some reason, she didn't hurt quite so much any more. Still, it wasn't nearly enough that she could get back on her feet, so she stayed where she was. Let it burn her to a crisp. The tugging at her wrist increased to an all out heave, drawing her into a sitting position.

'_You will not forsake our pact like this, Kate Rivers. I will not let you,'_ an almost-familiar voice from somewhere near her ear forced her to open her eyes, if only to make sure she and Etrigan were the only ones in the room. She didn't notice the demon's eyes narrow. 'I'm completely drained, there's nothing I can do,' she thought in answer to the proclamation.

'_You still have tools,'_ it whispered again before fading completely, but not without drawing her attention to her wrists. There, the two forward-most bracelets were alight, their runes spinning around their circumference fast enough to blur. The runes stopped and the glow flared.

Etrigan abandoned his bluff in order to watch what happened once she girl sat up. He squinted as two of her bracelets' luminescence increased blindingly, almost missing it when they fell from her wrists completely and were engulfed in that same orange light.

Kate's hands drew themselves forward instinctively, catching the sword—a long but thin, silvery blade covered in the same runes as her bracelets, which broke into a sort of helix three-fourths of the way down before flaring out to make a thin pommel directly above a flat, rectangular hilt—by its hilt before it could hit the ground and bringing it up quickly, before stopping just short of Etrigan's stomach. "I don't want to talk to you any more. Can I please leave now?" she asked, poking the sword into whatever fabric covered his form.

Etrigan laughed softly. "I am amused, I grant you reprieve, of my own volition, I grant you my leave."

"Goodie. Mind showing me the door? I'm afraid I'm going to stick myself with this thing if I try to stand," she mumbled, regarding the sword in her hands. 'Now what do I do with it?' she wondered. A flash later, the sword was gone and her bracelets were back in their customary place. "Odd."

Etrigan stood back and began chanting under his breath. A moment later, he was replaced by Jason Blood, who knelt and helped Kate to stand. "I apologize for that."

Yawning widely, Kate shrugged. She understood now what his aims had been. "Please tell me we're not going to do that again any time soon."

"Not today," Jason answered, leading her from the room. The second she stepped out, her injuries and the few rips to her clothes vanished. "You did well."

"Why am I only mildly surprised?" she asked, glancing down. 'At least I can walk on my own now.'

Blood led the girl back to her room where she promptly collapsed and wouldn't wake again until late that evening. Making his way through the house, he found himself in an often-used sitting room, complete with fireplace and leather chairs. Sitting down, he regarded the hearth and a moment later a fire sprung up inside it. "What did you think?" he asked as the face of Etrigan appeared in the flames.

"A pleasant sport she did provide, though her skills I did deride."

Jason nodded. "Do you suppose those bracelets are what drew what is left of the Fang's attention?"

"If my mother had informed me, I would assume that she had scorned me, an accomplishment great, her little blade, a nice end to my forceful raid," he replied. He didn't need to mention that the sword the girl had created had actually pierced his demon-hide, even if it was half by accident.

"What of the interference?"

Etrigan snorted. "Like Excalibur and the Lance of Longinus, it fairly reeked of a godly promise."

One of Jason's eyebrows rose in question. "You're not suggesting she's...?"

"You'd think her on par with mighty Zeus? Nay, merely a godling with ego bruised, perhaps in combat, perhaps in fate, they are now closer than any mate."

"They could be using each other, somehow. Some kind of agreement, perhaps? The Titans said that her records listed her as deceased—perhaps it made a deal with her as she was dying," Blood suggested.

"A charming girl, or so I'm told, but no deity's attention she'd hold. Only the best can make such a deal, and she lacks a flavor, perhaps a zeal."

Jason shrugged. "I would not be so quick to presume. What are we going to do with her next—and should we inform the Titans?"

"A cruel, cruel man you seem today, you'd grant me a toy, then steal it away? As for the Titans, why cause them worry? She'll likely reveal herself in a hurry," Etrigan answered, grinning.

"You're suggesting we teach her enough to use that power at will and then dump her back onto their doorstep? Do you think they're going to take kindly to being forced to baby-sit?"

"I beat her 'til she's black and blue, you wish me to act as father too? Nay, 'tis not my game, let the Titans play, fate led her to them anyway."

Jason was forced to agree. "So, about tomorrow?" he asked, as he and demon began to formulate a plan to further draw forth the girl's power.

Kate groaned, trying and failing to ignore the fact that one of her arms had pulled itself away from her body and was now shaking insistently in an attempt to wake her. Reaching out her other hand, she grabbed the offending appendage and pulled it back under the covers, where she then promptly rolled over onto it. "Go 'way. Katie needs sleep."

The arm pulled itself out from under the rest of her body, grabbed the edge of the bed, and pulled until she was laying on her back. It then jerked itself back in the other direction until it was even with her head. Kate flinched when she felt her own fingers begin to thump her forehead. When that didn't have the desired effect, the hand rose up a few inches, then fell back down. "Ow!" she yelled, sitting up and rubbing the place on her forehead where the bracelets had landed. Grabbing the offending limb, she pulled it up to her eye level and addressed it directly. It had never been quite this insistent before. "What do you want? I need rest."

Her index finger curled downwards before making a pointing gesture in that direction. Looking down, she noticed that her other hand—the one she was holding the possessed appendage with—was covering both her bracelets. She released her grip and found that several lines of runes along both were shifting. A moment later, they stopped and several of the characters along each lit up. Kate was about to complain that she didn't understand, but stopped when she realized that somehow, she _did_. Two words glowed clearly upon her wrist: "Awaken," and "Blood."

Groaning, she allowed herself to be pulled from the bed and directed out the door. "Don't I at least get a shower?" The tugging stopped... then reversed its direction towards the washroom. "My, how thoughtful of you," she mumbled sarcastically.

After getting cleaned up, Kate was lead back downstairs and along the same path she was taken the previous day. This time, she skipped the dining room and was drawn straight into the adjoining kitchen. Blood greeted her with a breakfast of bacon and toast—he'd lived for centuries and knew how to cook, but he'd also learned that people prefer simpler things sometimes.

"You are up early again. Are you always this punctual?" he asked, seating himself after pouring a glass of juice.

Kate glared at her now-seemingly-innocent hand. "I don't know, but someone was being rather insistent this morning."

Jason managed to keep a straight face before he asked, "Who?"

Glancing between the questioner and her limb, she looked puzzled. "It wasn't you?"

"No."

"Then I suppose I don't have a clue," she shrugged. That was becoming an all-too-often-used excuse. "Please tell me I don't have to play with your friend again today—or you, for that matter. I don't feel like being abused."

Blood chuckled, considering her request. "How do you feel about going into the city?"

Kate shrugged again, swallowing her mouthful of food before answering. "If it means I don't have to see that room again any time soon... What's it like?"

'As its name suggests, Gotham is a bit dreary—which is why I like it. This time of year though, it is a bit livelier."

"This time of the year? How so?"

Taking a moment to sip from his glass, Jason answered. "The businesses will have Christmas decorations up, and the streets will be crowded with shoppers."

Kate didn't understand half of that, but she nodded anyway. "When will we go?"

"As soon as you are finished eating," he said. "We should probably get you some new clothes as well—and shoes. There is an inch of snow on the ground this morning and it does not look as if it will stop any time soon."

"Snow?"

Snow, as Kate soon found out, was pretty...but damnably cold. She hadn't really noticed how cold it actually was outside until her feet first came into contact with the powdery stuff. She had immediately run to Blood's car, hopping from foot to foot until he opened the door for her. "Why is it so cold all of a sudden?" she asked as they neared the city limits.

Jason didn't point out the fact that it had been nearly as cold since she began her journey. "It is just that time of year. It is always cold like this in the winter."

"What's a winter?"

"One of the four seasons of the year—spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It seems you've much to relearn."

Kate frowned, pulling her gaze from the window to the other occupant of the vehicle. "'Relearn?' You mean I used to know?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Then why don't I know anything now?"

Shrugging, Jason brought the car to a stop near a department store. "I do not know."

After a moment of watching the people walk by through the frosted glass of the windshield, Kate sighed. "I want to remember."

Kate pressed a hand against the side of her head, attempting to rub away her headache. After purchasing several new changes of clothing, a jacket, and some shoes (they still didn't fit, and she didn't like the way the sales clerk had looked at her feet when asked if they had something a bit narrower) Jason had led her deeper into the city. The streets were crowded and every little noise seemed to make her head throb. Finally, it became too much. "Can we go inside somewhere soon? My head really hurts."

Stepping away from the crowd, Jason stopped in front of a store and feigned interest towards the things displayed within. When Kate was again within earshot, he spoke. "Not just yet. Tell me more about what you feel."

Frowning, she realized that she wasn't going anywhere until she had completed whatever task he had for her now. "I don't know—I feel... sick. Everyone is being too loud and it's making my head pound, and I can barely think."

"Metahuman abilities usually first become apparent at an early age—in the early teens, for the most part. Metropolis' Southern District Charity Hospital had you on-record as being a metahuman when you were admitted. Therefore, it stands to reason that your power had already manifested," he stated, watching her reflection in the glass.

"What power? The one you want me to use?"

Blood shook his head. "No—that one is different. It is my belief that they are mostly separate from one another. I am referring to your empathic abilities."

Kate squinted her eyes and tried to ignore the pain behind them as she took a few steps closer to the glass. "Sure, if I knew what that meant..."

"You feel what those around you feel, am I correct?"

"I don't know—sometimes, I guess. I haven't really been around anyone but you for very long."

Jason glanced towards the crowds behind them before turning his eyes back to Kate. It was his guess that if he could just make her aware of what she was doing, she would find a solution to it herself. "Clear your mind and try to imagine yourself separated from the crowds by a wall," he suggested, wondering if the same tactic described to him by the few telepaths he knew would work for the empath.

"Fine. But can we please go inside soon?" she asked. After a moment with no answer, she sighed and closed her eyes, doing as he asked. For a while, nothing happened, and then gradually the pain behind her eyes lessened—though it didn't disappear completely. It was more of a dull throb now, but even that was welcome in comparison to the near-migraine of a moment ago. "...How?"

"I know a few others with gifts similar in nature to your own. Besides—despite that you can not seem to remember much of anything, you can still talk. It stood to reason that being able to shut out others' feelings would come nearly as naturally."

"Yeah, but it's still there... it just isn't as loud as it was," she pointed out, resisting the urge to flinch as a woman pushing a stroller and attempting to control three screaming children walked directly behind her. "Oww."

"Hmm?"

She pointed towards the woman, who was now thankfully almost across a nearby intersection. "She was really upset, and it made my headache worse when she walked by."

Jason nodded, stepping away from the window. "I see. Come along, there are a few other places we should visit while we are here."

"Stop, it HURTS! I said I can't do it!"

Etrigan would have rolled his eyes. The child was being stubborn again and he had decided to give her some incentive to draw upon her power... by slowly crushing the fingers of one of her hands. "Life is pain and pain is life, why should it be a cause of strife? This is a lesson you should know, and to teach it I'll eat your finger or toe!"

They had been trying to get her to use her power by her own will for well over three hours now and had met with little success. She had managed to form her sword again, but Etrigan demanded she put it away as that wasn't what he wanted. She had sulked, whined, and generally acted very much like a petulant child but she had persisted. And now, it had come down to this: for every failed opportunity Etrigan gave her to make him stop, he would break one of her fingers. Kate was down to five fingers and two thumbs.

"A moron could this lesson learn, when abused, attack in return!" he growled out, swatting her into a nearby wall. Chance dictated that she would eventually snap and forcibly dig into that power—it was only a matter of time.

Clenching her uninjured fist, she swung it towards the demon...and missed completely. "A belch, a fart or mayhap a glare, have much more strength than that punch there!" he quipped, flicking her forehead with a finger...which sent her head cracking back into the wall.

For all his threats and actions, Kate knew that the demon was just _toying_ with her—and that made it all the more humiliating. No matter what she did, she'd never be able to put a dent in it. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to remember what it was she had done to bring about her powers the last time. Even the familiar tug at her arm was gone, seeming to tell her to figure it out for herself.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a foot slammed into her side, sending her sliding across the wall and leaving a trail of quickly-crystallizing blood. Once more, the demon was in her face. The scent of brimstone assaulted her senses, further distracting her. Etrigan's next words however gave her pause for thought. "Did your mother drink with you in her womb? HIT ME NOW OR FACE YOUR DOOM!" he roared, slamming one massive fist into the wall next to her head. Maybe that was it—maybe she was simply trying too hard. Thinking back, she now remembered what had been different between the last time and now: she hadn't called upon anything—it had up and demanded she open herself and use it.

Closing her eyes, she cleared her mind and simply...let it happen. A tingle at her forehead and a slightly odd feeling in her hand, then the pain of several broken fingers disappeared. 'Ok, I'm stronger now... but I don't think it will last. What can I do with it though?'

Kate brought up her arms and threw all of her newly-acquired superhuman strength into shoving the demon away from her. Etrigan unmoved. That was to be expected from a being whose physical strength rivaled that of the Man of Steel, but she didn't know that. He grabbed a handful of cloth and gave her a good fling in the general direction of the opposite wall. "I shudder to ask, since my student is slow, but can you control your powers that glow?" he asked—eager to see what she had to offer him.

Standing, Kate attempted to catch the breath that had been knocked from her lungs. Sure, her previous wounds were gone, but she had new ones now—cracked ribs, judging by the fact that it felt like something was stabbing her sides every time she tried to breathe. The power she'd temporarily gained faded to nothingness. "Maybe. Hold on a second while I try to do it again."

Her forehead tingled again as the crests flared to life and faded out, leaving her able to breathe again. "I am so liking this," she mumbled, grinning a bit. The feeling of nigh-invulnerability was a good thing. Then she remembered exactly why she had been hurting. 'What can I do this time?' she wondered idly, flexing her new power... then she knew that she could alter the local gravitational fields, which should allow her to fly—along with other, more creative things which may or may not annoy her demonic mentor/tormentor. "This should be fun."

"My girl, you're looking awfully orange, you…" Whatever Etrigan could find to rhyme with orange was lost to time when he slammed into the ceiling...and then the floor, and then the ceiling again, and finally the floor once more. He stood, noting that the girl was sitting down again.

Looking up at the demon she had just tossed around like a rag doll—albeit a very, very heavy one—Kate grinned. "Katie's done for the day. That took way too much out of me. Night-night," she mumbled, promptly losing consciousness. It seemed that, though she could find the ability to do something, that didn't necessarily mean she had enough energy to do it.

"A reward, I suppose, is her due, so I will give her a rest, lest her wrath I should rue," he mumbled. Etrigan was annoyed, though mildly amused as well. It seemed she had rid herself of the defeatist attitude he loathed so much.****

"Tell me what you have learned so far," Blood asked over breakfast.

Putting her fork down, Kate thought for a moment before answering. "I can feel what other people feel, but only if I'm close enough, and crowds give me a headache—too many people in too small a space. But I know how to block some of that off, so I don't go crazy just from walking down the street. And if someone feels something strongly enough, I feel it too—whether I want to or not, I guess."

Blood nodded—she was making progress, now that she was mostly aware of what she could do. "Go on. What about your other power?"

"I think I can use that when I want now—or at least when I need to. Well, I don't really try to use it so much as it just happens... And I think that the abilities it gives are pretty random, though usually beneficial to my current situation—and they're pretty draining."

"What else?"

"I can make a sword! All I have to do is imagine holding one and it's there," she grinned, playing with one of the bracelets used to make the sword.

"Is that all?" Jason asked. He already knew all of this—he wanted to make sure _she_ knew it. It seemed to help.

Kate thought for a minute, trying to remember anything she had forgotten. "I think I can read everything but modern languages ((this had been made embarrassingly (for Jason, anyway) obvious in an incident involving an Egyptian exhibit, several passerby, and one hysterically laughing Kate mumbling something about 'the fleas of a thousand camels')), but I don't have any real control over that—it just sort of comes and goes. And I think something's wrong."

Jason noted the look of worry that crossed her face. "Why do you say that?"

"Remember when I did that thing the last time?"

Blood nodded. He hadn't been able to figure out exactly what power she had drawn on that time, but assumed it was another form of telekinesis. "What about it?"

"Well, I can do this now," Kate mumbled before lifting one foot and bringing it back down to the floor, which sent her several inches off the ground. It took a moment for her feet to make contact with the ground again. "I think part of it stuck."

_Now_ Blood understood. She had tapped into some form of gravity manipulation. "What else can you do with it?" he asked curiously.

Kate shrugged. "Jump good? Fly maybe?" she asked, not sure herself.

"We will have to test that later. Anything else?"

"Nope, I think that's pretty much it. Oh! And I noticed that my wounds go away when I pull in a new ability."

"I noticed that as well," Jason nodded. "Do you think you can predict or control what you channel?"

Shaking her head, Kate took a few bites of her breakfast. She couldn't seem to ever get enough to eat lately. "I don't think it works like that."

"Would you like to learn to read and write?"

"Uhhuh," she mumbled around a mouthful. Swallowing and taking a sip from her glass, she looked at her benefactor hopefully. "You'll teach me?"

Blood nodded, standing. "Certainly. Are you finished?" he asked, indicating her now-empty plate.

"Yup!"

"Come with me then," he said, leading her through several hallways before entering a room he had set up the previous night. Contained within were all the things he figured he would need to teach her the basics of reading and arithmetic—after all, if he could teach squires such things to squires in the dark ages, then this should be a piece of cake.

It had been eight days since Kate Rivers had accompanied Jason Blood to his manor. In that time, she had made a startling amount of progress in learning how to channel the power than Jason was now certain belonged to a broken godling, as well as her own innate empathic abilities. She still didn't have full control over her natural ability, but Blood doubted she ever would. The few telepaths he knew of had taken _years_ to perfect even a simple block...and she had done it only minutes after he first suggested it—but other than that, her empathy seemed passive at best, which would make it nearly impossible to ever control.

Aside from the development of her abilities, she was progressing fairly well in learning how to read. The way she took in everything around her brought to Jason's mind the process of how a child learns to walk and talk, though on a scale close to being exponential in comparison. She was also maturing mentally, though more slowly than in any other area—but his guess was that it wouldn't take long before she would be thinking as a fully matured adult...or at least someone her own age. Now, they could begin testing her on what she had gleaned from his and Etrigan's instruction.

That is where we rejoin Etrigan and Kate—in that same white-walled room. Currently, the demon was outlining the conditions of their oncoming match. "The number of blows you must land is ten, upon this demon, Etrigan, but these should not be a fart's breath, as was before, or I swear, I'll smash you through the floor!"

Kate knew better. Getting past Etrigan's defenses and avoiding his offenses would be next to impossible, trying, and most likely very painful. "Gee, that sounds like _so much _fun."

...It seemed she'd also started to grow a sense of sarcasm.

Etrigan didn't reply verbally—he simply charged and swiped his fist in the general direction of her midsection. He wasn't expecting his fist to collide with some form of barrier inches from its target. Kate grinned. "Is it my turn yet?" she asked, ducking out of the demon's range. 'Shield won't last long if he keeps that up,' she thought frantically. His first blow had pretty much drained her hastily borrowed power.

The demon's answer was to inhale quickly before spitting out a jet of hellfire. Eyes wide, Kate dropped the shield and jumped, calling on her limited control over her own gravity and narrowly avoiding the blast. 'Can't keep this up either, it takes up too much energy,' she thought, reorienting herself in midair before coming to rest on the ceiling. 'Maybe I can surprise him...' To her credit, her next stunt did manage to catch Etrigan off guard—she'd never before taken the offensive. Unfortunately, she overestimated her control over the stuck ability.

Launching off of the ceiling, she waited until almost the last moment before forming her sword and twisting her body around to slash at the demon as she flew by, cutting deep into his arm. Of course, that's about the time she realized that she couldn't slow down and she collided with the floor before bouncing up and into the wall where she came to a stop. "Oww," she whined, attempting and failing to sit up. "That hurt just a bit."

Sparing a glance at the cut on his arm, Etrigan turned around slowly to regard the girl. "One blow, huzzah, a victory for you, but you shall never reach number two!" he snorted, stepping closer. He grinned, pulling his foot back and intending to kick her head into the wall, thereby knocking her unconscious. Mere inches from her head, the now-familiar crests there flared to life, and the girl...disappeared—only to reappear a fraction of a second later above his head. Her foot impacting somewhere in the general vicinity of his ear wasn't painful so much as annoying—she'd landed another blow.

"Two!" Kate crowed, picking herself up from the floor. She hadn't expected to be able to teleport, and suddenly being able to do so had been exhilarating—but she'd only had enough energy left for one. And now, she was mostly spent. Unless she could find a way to stall for time, this fight would end here and now.

Etrigan chuckled, approaching the girl even as she backed away. He knew that she was done-for now, and he knew that she knew it. Gaining the ability to teleport had been a massive stroke of luck—but only in the short run, because it had obviously depleted whatever energy stores her body had. "I see your strength and weakness too, your powers bring great change to you, many strengths you pull from your ass, but it seems you pull them far too fast! Your frame, though fair, lacks the energy to give you endurance to spar with me."

"I'm burning myself out too quickly," she agreed, circling around the room and trying to stay out of the demon's range.

Moving too quickly for the girl to track, Etrigan dashed forward and slammed the flat of his palm into her solar-plexus, then used his momentum to paste her against the nearby wall. "One new lesson, and one of old, the latter I have already told, you must deal with pain in battle horrid, from the lightest blow to hellfire torrid. Your second lesson, which you already know, you have great strength but your mind is slow, your abilities many, but your wisdom is nil, if you don't use them correctly, I'll move in for the kill!" he ground out before bringing that same arm back and smashing it into her elbow, obliterating the joint.

Etrigan snorted as she slid down the wall and fell onto her face—no witty banter, no last-ditch attempts at throwing off her attacker... just a quick plunge into blissful unconsciousness. Or that's what Etrigan assumed anyway, as he turned away from the downed girl. Perhaps he should have rolled her over to make sure she was unconscious.

It had taken an ungodly amount of willpower not to scream and do exactly what Etrigan assumed she had done when the demon decided to turn her elbow to mush, but Kate had managed somehow. The crests flickered across her forehead momentarily as she laid face-down, panting softly. The pain faded though, and she grinned. 'I really, _really_ like that,' she thought, wondering what she'd drawn out this time. She didn't feel any new temporary skills flow across her consciousness, nor did she feel any different from a few moments ago. ...Scratch that—she felt a hell of a lot better.

Furrowing her brow, Kate concentrated on her body, trying to pin down every subtle nuance of the rise and flow of power within it. After a few seconds, she realized that her energy was returning—slowly, but surely. Her hopes of recovering all of her spent energy were dashed however when she heard the demon approaching again. 'He'll take one look at me and know I'm awake. I have to think of something...'

Picking the fallen girl up around the waist, Etrigan hefted her over his shoulder before turning to leave. 'Katelin, Katelin, burning bright, admit it Blood, she lost this fight.'

Etrigan had the distinct impression that Jason Blood was smirking when he next heard his voice. 'I would not be so sure.'

Before the demon could ponder that statement, Kate drew on her fluke ability, shoving herself off Etrigan's shoulder. Arching up into a flip behind the demon, she let go of that power and almost smiled when her feet touched the floor and she didn't fall on her ass. 'Ok, so if I keep in mind how much power I'm using when I first push off of things, I can glide for a bit before letting gravity catch back up to me—nifty.'

Kate drew her sword and made two quick slices across Etrigan's flank before running towards the nearest wall. 'I don't use as much energy when I do that in short bursts, and if I'm careful, I can keep using it like this as long as I'm still recharging or whatever.'

"Well done, my girl, such a skillful fake! But I shall not soon repeat that mistake!" Etrigan applauded dryly, mentally adding two more points to her tally.

Grinning, Kate shrugged. "Today's my lucky day?" she asked, the beginnings of a plan of attack forming in her mind.

"This I say, this I tell, that shall happen on a COLD DAY IN HELL!" Pulling in a breath, Etrigan roared and began discharging balls of hellfire.

Yelping, Kate ran _up_ the wall and across the ceiling before dropping down directly in front of Etrigan. "Err, oops."

"Oops, indeed, and now you BLEED!" he grinned, swiping out his claws...only to miss.

"I thought about what you said, and I think I've figured it out—at least for now. See, at the moment I think I'm channeling something that's actually restoring my energy reserves, and if I use the power over my own specific gravity carefully, I'll be back up to full power in no time! All I have to do is avoid you, of course," Kate explained, dropping from where she'd decided to 'fall' towards a nearby door (she had been standing on it sideways, in relation to the floor), thus avoiding the demon's reach.

Turning his head to regard her, Etrigan smirked. "From my experience, you've already lost, you've made some blows but at what cost? Your luck stays with you, that I'll grant, but you won't run forever, you simply can't!"

"True," she agreed. That brief respite had finally faded, and she was back to square one--well, almost. At least now she had a new trick or two. "But maybe I'll get lucky if I keep surprising you."

"I doubt surprise will be your ally, if you rely on it, you shall soon die."

Kate shrugged, opening herself to that odd power once again. '...I think I can toss out energy now,' she realized, grinning. 'The only problem is that this'll probably drain all that I've gained back.'

Etrigan charged, deciding to see for himself what new power she'd gained. As he drew closer, his instincts told him that she would probably try to dodge by going over his head again. He would let her, if only to see just how much longer she could last. His assumption was proven correct as she attempted a clumsy flip overhead (well, it was more like she suddenly decided that the ceiling was the floor and then changed her mind halfway there to land behind him). What the demon hadn't foreseen was getting nailed from behind by a hail of energy bullets.

Having landed, Kate had turned around and opened her palm, sending out a small energy ball. Halfway to the demon, the ball had split into four smaller pieces of itself and caught him in the shoulders and neck. "Does that count as eight?" she asked. Deciding not to give him a chance to answer, she charged in and swung as he flung his arm out. Blade intercepted clawed hand and came off better, as the demon's hand was split through between two of his fingers. "Hey look, red snow!"

Etrigan frowned, sparing a glance at his already-healing appendage. Enough was enough. She had become too self-confident. Stepping in quickly, he slammed his shoulder into her midsection, sending her crashing into the far wall, where she slid down and did not get up. Having learned his lesson the first time, he rushed over and folded his massive hand around her head before pounding it into the wall. He had enough strength to literally turn her head into pulp—giving her a concussion or seven was downright gentle in his book.

Picking the girl up again, he glanced around for her dropped sword before realizing that it had dissolved back into its bracelet-form the moment she lost consciousness.

'So does she pass?'

Etrigan snorted, stepping through the exit and making his way towards her bedroom. 'Her efforts were sufficient, but barely it's true, but I suppose that it will do.' he allowed. He was impressed, if only with the fact that the girl seemed to have a lucky streak a mile wide.

"Now, write your name."

Kate frowned, her tongue poking out one side of her mouth as she sloppily scrawled 'K-A-T-E' across the top of a piece of paper with—of all things—an old-fashioned writing quill. Jason seemed to prefer those at times, for some odd reason she didn't understand and likely never would since he never brought it up and she didn't know it was odd enough that she should ask. "Like that?"

Glancing at the paper, Blood nodded. "Good enough, for now. You will need to get someone to help you practice."

"Who? You're not the only one here? ...Besides the big meanie, that is."

Jason laughed. In all his years, he'd never heard Etrigan referred to as 'that big meanie.' "No, it is just myself and Etrigan here—usually only myself. Actually, I will be taking you back to the Titans today."

"Why?" Kate asked. She didn't really want to leave, now that she'd grown accustomed to the place. Besides having to 'play' with Etrigan, it was nice. "I like it here. It's quiet. There isn't as much noise." That though, wasn't entirely true. Soon after first going into Gotham, she had begun to crave similar contact again—if not on such a large scale.

"You need to interact with children your own age," he answered, taking her quill and paper and tucking them away into a desk drawer.

"What am I to do there?" she asked, standing and following him from the room, towards the house's main exit.

Opening the front door, Jason led her to his car. Her belongings were already packed away into a small duffel bag, stowed carefully in the back seat. "Grow up, essentially. Learn how to act as one of your own age. Do you not desire to know who you were, before you became like this?"

Closing her door, she buckled her safety belt as the car started and thought on the question for a few moments. "Should I? What if that other me wasn't a very nice person? Should I really be her again?" It seemed she'd had time during her stay to start to question her current state of existence and had begun to have doubts.

"I'm sure you were a fine individual," Jason assured her. "Everyone has a past Kate, and they all have to face it at some point. Do you not believe it would be better finding out about yourself with friends there to help you rather than having it thrust into your face when it is least expected or wanted?"

"Friends? Wouldn't you help me?"

Jason frowned—they were getting close to a subject he didn't much like thinking about: his own past. "I would, but I will not always be there for you. That is not my place."

"Oh."

They spent the rest of the drive in silence, both plagued with thoughts of the past—one, a past he would have to live with for the rest of his many, many days; the other, a past she didn't know if she wanted to be a part of again at the moment.

"Can you train her?" Blood asked of Tim, once again seated in the Titans' living room.

"What?"

"Can you keep her here—take her under your wing, as it were?"

Tim almost sighed—almost, but didn't. He owed Jason Blood one too many favors as it was, so he would be hard pressed to turn the man down now. Still, he'd like to know exactly what they were getting into. "Why us? What do you know?"

"She was lead here first. She is like a child, Tim. She needs to be around people her own age," Jason answered.

"Lead by what? And how much of a threat is it to my team?"

Shrugging, Jason grinned slightly. "I am not exactly sure," he lied. Well, he wasn't _really_ lying—he and Etrigan had their suspicions, but they weren't _entirely_ positive. "She is more of a threat to the populace at large. Being here with people who know how to deal with such things would help her immensely." He also didn't mention that she was advancing at an almost frightening pace—Tim didn't need to know that and would likely figure it out on his own in due time.

"What did you mean by saying she's like a child?"

"When I first took Kate into my home, she was the mental equivalent of a six-year-old. Essentially, she thought like a child, not like a person of her age. Do not misunderstand, she is very intelligent. She is learning quickly, but she does not understand the concepts behind so much of what goes on around her."

"How mature would you say she is now?" Tim asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Jason shrugged. "It is difficult to judge with her, but I would say between ten and fourteen—give or take."

"That's better than Rob," Noel quipped from the doorway to the kitchen. He'd only caught the tail-end of the conversation.

"What can she do?"

Again, Jason shrugged. "Her powers—save for empathy—seem to manifest at random, and only last a short while. One of her abilities stuck with her though, so my guess is that it could happen again."

"So," Noel said, taking a seat beside Tim. "You're saying she possesses a medley of abilities that could show up at any given time and she doesn't know how to use them?"

"Well, from what I gathered, she _does_ know how to use them—just not what their limits are."

"What about her family?" Tim asked. "I'm sure they're pretty disturbed about the fact that their daughter's body just vanished from a morgue. It might be weird seeing her alive and in the flesh again, but she is—they should know."

"I get the feeling her family does not know her body disappeared," said Jason. "You are of course welcome to look into it..."

Finally, Tim did sigh—this time, in defeat. "Ok, fine. We'll keep her here for a while—even send a couple of people to her home check things out when she's ready."

"Thank you, Tim."

"It is time for us to part ways, Kate," Jason said, opening Kate's door and urging her from the car, then taking her bag from his back seat and handing it over.

Taking the duffel, Kate glanced towards the tower where Robin stood waiting—in sight, but giving them a moment alone. "I'll see you again, right?"

Jason smiled, ruffling her hair. "Perhaps. I will keep in touch."

Impulsively, Kate reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist, her forehead pressed against his chest. "Thanks, Jason—for everything."

They separated and Blood walked around and got into the car. "Take care," he called, starting the engine and driving away, leaving Kate standing at the base of Titan Tower. 'Your compassion confuses, my companion of years, she is not of your blood, so why all these tears?'

'You haven't been quite yourself either,' Jason pointed out, ignoring the question. Etrigan gave the mental equivalent of a huff. 'Now that I think about it though, we've both been acting differently since we came into contact with the girl. Perhaps her empathy is more than just passive, after all. Or...'

Etrigan's silence was answer in itself.

Kate turned towards the Tower—Jason's car was well out of sight. Robin had been standing behind her, waiting, for some time now. "I can stay with you?"

Tim nodded. "Yeah. Come on; let's get in out of the cold."

"Ok."

"Think you can keep a secret?" he asked out of the blue.

Kate nodded. "Sure. What secret?"

Walking through the doors to the bottom floor of the tower, Tim glanced at the girl beside him. 'I doubt it would hurt to tell her who we are—someone is bound to slip up and say the wrong name anyway.'

"I'm Tim."

Author's Notes: First of all: Thank you Bobcat and Legend Maker for fixing Etrigan's lines (and for much more help, advice, etc)—you've saved my ass. In case you're wondering: no, there isn't a chance in hell that Kate could have even scratched Etrigan at that point... well, save for with the sword. And no, it isn't the all-powerful kill-a-hundred-demons-with-a-single-blow Fang, or a knockoff thereof. Noel did more damage to the demon in Legend Maker's Black and White, and vice verse. Etrigan was just **_toying_** with her—he could have easily killed her at any time. And if Jason Blood wants to _drive_ from Gotham to Tokyo in an hour an a half, I'm sure he probably could, so going halfway down the eastern seaboard in a couple of hours should be a breeze. And I'm not going to explain away everything at the end of every chapter—use your imaginations because I don't want to spoil things... if anyone is actually reading this, anyway.


	4. Settling In

**Gods' Playground**

04 – Settling In

Tim explained how to work the elevator, along with what floor the bedrooms were on. "There's food in the fridge—for a change—so help yourself," he said, stepping off the elevator and into the main living room. "We've got a spare room upstairs, at the end of the hall."

"Ok."

Tim was spared further awkwardness when alarms sounded across the tower. 'Saved by the bell,' he thought idly, glancing at where their guest had sat down on the Titans' couch. "Look, we have to go. I have no idea when we'll be back. Stay on this floor, or the floor above, where the living quarters are. Understand?"

Kate nodded from her place on the couch. "I won't go anywhere," she promised. For some reason, something about the way he addressed her was beginning to irritate her. 'I'm not completely helpless, you know.'

Giving the girl one last glance, Tim ran to the elevator and made his way to the garage. Gar and Tara were the only ones still in the Tower—that he knew of, anyway—and they had probably flown ahead. Raven and Noel had left to catch a movie somewhere only a few minutes ago, Victor was out fine-tuning the T-Car, and he had no idea where Nigel and Rob were but they were supposed to be on patrol. Hopping onto his motorcycle, he took off into Jump City, following the signal from the bike's built in communicator/tracking system.

Kate quickly grew bored after Tim left. Yawning, she made her way into the kitchen and looked through the refrigerator. 'Let's see... meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, bread—sandwich!' she grinned, quickly throwing together her impromptu dinner. Soon after eating, she yawned and made her way to the elevator, pressing the button Tim had pointed out which would lead to the floor above this one. "Why am I so tired lately?" she asked of no one in particular.

The elevator opened a moment later and Kate stepped out. Looking around, she found herself in the top part of the 'T', as evidenced by the hall that stretched to either side. Glancing left and right, she wondered briefly which end her new room was on. "This would be a great time for you to help," she muttered, casting a quick glance towards her wrists. Her request was answered when a familiar tug there began guiding her to her left.

A short walk found her in front of a door at the left end of the hallway. "This is it?" she asked quietly. Her answer came in the form of her possessed arm jerking itself up and onto the door knob. Twisting the knob and pushing the door open, she stepped into the room and found the light switch. Looking around, she took in her new place of residence. Compared to her lodgings at Jason Blood's manor, the room Tim had given her was downright bare. It contained only a low bed, a bookshelf half-full of a random assortment of reading material, a small desk with a laptop computer, and a desk chair. The room's most attention-grabbing feature was its floor-to-ceiling windows which looked out across the bay that separated Titan Tower from the rest of Jump City.

An insistent tug at her wrist directed her towards the bed but Kate planted her feet and held her ground. "No—I have to wash," she pointed out. The tugging changed directions, pulling her back out into the hallway and towards a nearby washroom. Clearly, it was feeling impatient. After a thorough shower, she stepped back out and made her way back to the guest room where she would be staying. She took a flying leap from the door and landed somewhere near the middle of the bed, then made her way under the covers. Kate was asleep before she had time to remember that she'd forgotten to close the door, but that didn't matter—it closed on its own soon after the girl fell into slumber.

Kate awoke to that familiar, irritating tug. Opening her eyes, she glared at... a girl, sitting on the edge of her bed, smiling at her. "Who are you?" Kate asked.

The girl said nothing but stood and motioned for Kate to follow. Shrugging, Kate stood as well. Halfway across the room, the girl pointed back towards the bed, drawing her attention to where... Kate was still sleeping soundly. "Huh?"

The smaller girl, upon closer inspection, looked to be a shorter, younger version of Kate herself—though this odd girl had Kate's old long hair (not a speck of green in sight) and a pair of softly glowing crests alight in the center of her forehead. Little-Kate took hold of her older twin's wrist and the two disappeared, only to reappear on the roof of Titan Tower. Finally, the little girl spoke. "Hi."

Kate was confused...but then again, when wasn't she recently? "Um, hello? I'm Kate, who are you?"

The child smiled. "I know who you are, and I suppose you can call me Medley."

"I'm still asleep. This is a dream, isn't it?"

"Very perceptive. This is the only way I can talk to you as I am now—at least for any extended period of time."

"Who are you?" Kate asked again.

Walking over to the edge of the tower, Medley took a seat, letting her legs swing over the edge. "Even if you remember nothing else, you should know the answer to that."

"You're the one who has been helping me? You led me here. Are you what's inside me?"

"Yup!" Medley confirmed. "I've been helping you since the beginning—but I can't do that for very much longer. I've just about lost the last of my ability to influence and interact with the world around you, you see."

"Why?"

Frowning slightly, Medley looked out over the city...and beyond. "I'm very tired—I would very much like to rest, soon, but there are things you have to know before I can. You have to grow up Kate—learn the ways of the world and prepare yourself."

"For what?" Kate asked, taking a seat beside the other girl.

"I can't tell you that—you are not yet mature enough. But I can tell you some of it... There are those that desire power Kate and as you are now, you would be an easy target for such attempts. You have to grow stronger—in mind, body, and spirit. That is why I am going to teach you about the world while I still can. You won't actually _remember_ any of this—not clearly, anyway—but the knowledge will be there."

Kate sighed, thinking back over the past weeks. "Will I remember who I was?"

"No," Medley shook her head. "I'm sorry. You were _dead_Kate. Nearly all that made up the Kate Rivers of the past was lost. You're welcome to learn who you were—I encourage it, actually—but that doesn't make you who you **are**. Do you understand?" Katie didn't need to know that the old Kate, as part of their pact, had asked to start _completely_ over—in essence, end her old life and start a new one—at least not yet. Though for the life of her, Medley didn't know why her vessel had chosen to do so. Perhaps it was simply the fact that the girl was weary of living life...

"Not really. Jason said I needed to face my past, though."

Medley nodded. "Yes, you do. Now, enough worrying about that—you'll deal with it soon enough, most likely. Come on, there's something I want to show you."

"Where?" Kate asked, standing.

"There," Medley pointed towards the city. Taking Kate's hand, she shifted her awareness across the city, taking the other girl with her.

"Why do they fight?" Medley asked some time later as she and Kate watched the Titans doing battle far below.

"I don't know," Kate shrugged. "Why do they?"

"They live in a conflicting society that abhors violence, yet at the same time praises and encourages it—along with many, many other things. That same society spawns the things they fight against—murderers, rapists, psychotics and the like. In essence, they must become like those they fight against to defeat them. Looking at it from that perspective, they are no better than what they fight—so why do they?"

Kate was silent for several long moments before speaking again. "Maybe they don't see it like that? Maybe they do it simply because they believe it is right."

"What makes using violence against another living thing 'right'? What justifies that kind of response?"

"It's like you said—they have to become at least a little like those they fight against because it's the only way. They do it to protect those around them. Words can't solve every problem—some people just won't listen, I guess."

"Yes, protect the many by harming the few that threaten them."

Kate shook her head. "No, that doesn't sound right. They're good people..."

"Good people don't revel in acts of senseless violence and destruction."

"Then it doesn't make any sense! I don't see what point you're trying to make!"

Sighing, Medley gave up on her attempt to let Kate figure it out on her own for the moment. "Sometimes good people have to do bad things in order to make sure that bad people don't do worse things. Understand?" Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. Medley knew the Titans and those like them didn't take pleasure from hurting others, but the simplest answer would do for the moment and could be built upon later.

"Somewhat."

"It's like this... The Titans and those of their ilk will fight their hardest to ensure that others with gifts like theirs don't abuse the power given to them. Even in the worst of situations, they try not to take life if they can avoid it. Even if they are up against someone who has murdered hundreds of people, they will still try to defeat that person without killing them so that he or she can be brought to justice in the eyes of their peers instead of simply taking revenge for the lives lost by taking the life of the murderer."

"What's revenge?"

Medley sniffed disdainfully. "It's the mortals' way of coping with the wrongs done to them. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... if everyone practiced it, they would wipe themselves out in a matter of years simply because everyone would be blind and unable to chew."

"But they aren't like that," Kate pointed out. The battle below was winding down.

"Exactly. They're different. It is what separates them from those they fight against—the ability to rise above their baser impulses and do what is _right_, not what they desire. But even so, they're only mortal—they can't and don't rise above those urges all the time."

"So what makes them different from everyone else is that they do the right thing?"

"They do what is right when no one else can or will."

"What is the right thing?"

"The wrong thing, 'evil,' is when a person takes joy in hurting others, or takes malicious advantage of those around them, believes themselves above everyone, or takes the life of another. Those are just some of the evils of gods, mortals, and otherwise. I suppose then that the right thing would be to respect the life around you, strive to protect it, and aid those in need."

"Killing is bad, then?"

Medley nodded. "Yes—very bad. But sometimes it is necessary. You see, not every life can be preserved. Sometimes, it is beyond mortal means to redeem one who has wandered too far down the wrong path, and that person has to be removed for the sake of protecting those around them. Basically, by mortal standards, it is almost justifiable to take the life of an individual who possesses too much strength, will, or sheer hatred for life to be to be cured or even contained—sometimes even death isn't enough to hold something like that. There are times when something that strong has to be completely and utterly erased..."

Below, flashing lights indicated that the police had moved in to take over with the containment of Plasmus, though Kate didn't know that was who the Titans had been fighting this whole time. "When is it ok to take life?"

"It is never 'ok', but it is forgivable when it becomes a last resort for protecting innocents and those you care for. There will come a time when you will have to make that decision for yourself, and it won't be easy. Well, that is to say that dealing with the consequences will be harder than the actual deed itself."

"I don't want to."

"You won't be given a choice."

"What if I run away?"

"Then the lives of those lost to whatever you fled from rest on your shoulders, because you had the ability to do something about it yet refused to act. I know it sounds hard, but that's just the way it is. It's the life these people lead; the life you _must_ lead if you—**we**—are to survive."

Kate sighed. This was too much for one night. "Can we go back to bed now? My head hurts and I don't want to think about it any more."

Smiling, Medley nodded. "Sure. But it won't be that easy to escape thinking about such things in the future—you must face them eventually. It is part of becoming an adult."

"Who said I wanted to be one of those?"

"You don't have a say in the matter."

Morning rolled around all too soon for our little walking enigma—though thankfully it didn't involve being woken by a pair of bracelets smacking her in the forehead. No, this time it was the sun that woke her as its rays clawed their way forcibly past her closed eyelids and proceeded to river dance all over her optic nerves. Kate groaned and rolled over, pulling her pillow over her head. Unfortunately though, it seemed the fates were against her getting that extra five minutes of sleep. The sound of a knock at her door made its way past the pillow covering her head.

"Kate, are you awake?" someone called from the other side of the door, Tim by the sound of the voice.

Pulling the pillow off her head, Kate glared towards the door. "No. Go away! Katie's trying to sleep," she grumbled, closing her eyes again, her habit of referring to herself in the third person rearing its head again...though considering the fact that she currently housed two separate minds under one body, maybe it wasn't so much third person.

The door opened and Tim poked his head in—years of living with two girls (then three, and now four it seemed) had taught him to proceed with caution at this point in the morning as one never knew when they were up and wandering around in something relatively indecent, and some of them had a tendency to throw random heavy objects (or bolts of energy/telekinesis) in the general direction of anyone who dared invade the sanctity of their morning rituals. Seeing that she was sufficiently under the covers, Tim opened the door the rest of the way. "There's breakfast in the kitchen and I'd like to get started with your training as soon as possible. Also, I'll need to run a couple of tests on your powers before we begin."

Kate groaned and threw the pillow in the general direction of the door. "Why won't anyone ever let me sleep in?"

Deftly catching the projectile, Tim grinned. "You've got five minutes to get down to the living room, or I'll send BB in with a bucket of ice water," he warned jokingly, tossing the pillow back far more accurately and closing the door before she could toss it back, after pulling it from around her face of course.

Four minutes later Kate stumbled out of the elevator, through the Titans' living room, and into the kitchen where the majority of the team was gathered. Her shirt was on inside out, her hair was a mess, and she'd left her shoes and socks back in her room. Glancing around, she noted the items on the kitchen counter and table: a couple of bottles of things she couldn't identify, a box labeled 'L-u-c-k-y C-h-a-r-m-s' (this didn't tell her anything about its contents, so she moved on), a similar box labeled 'C-h-e-e-r-i-o-s' (which again told her nothing), some toasted pieces of bread, and a stick of yellow stuff. Some of the Titans had cups of black stuff (or brown)—probably from that pot of the same on the counter—and Starfire had what looked to be a bowl of brightly colored shapes submersed in a light brown liquid.

"Breakfast?" she asked of Tim, taking a seat at the table in lieu of rummaging through the cabinets in search of something edible that she recognized. Jason had always cooked for her so she hadn't a clue as to how she should make her own.

Tim made to stand up, but Noel beat him to it by snaking out the Shimmer and snagging a bowl from a cabinet, a spoon, and the box marked 'Cheerios.' Setting them down in front of the girl, he took a sip from his own cup. "Eat these, they're good for you. Still can't read well?"

Kate shook her head. "I can tell it says 'che-ear-e-oss' but the little round things on the front didn't look like food."

Across the table, Gar blinked. "_Dude_," he mumbled, grinning. It looked as though he had another sucker to try his tofu recipes on.

"If Gar asks you to try tofu-anything, say no," Nigel warned.

"Hey! It's good! Don't dis the tofu, man."

Tim coughed to get their attention. It seemed he had been right in assuming that one of them would slip sooner or later. "Well, we might as well get the introductions out of the way—again—since, as Nigel just proved, most of the team is prone to slipping every now and then, and erasing your memory of the event every time it happens will be a hassle... You already know who I am."

Nigel grinned, looking sheepish. "Sorry Tim," he mumbled before turning his attention to the new girl. "You may call me Nigel Hastings, as my real name is nearly impossible to pronounce in your tongue."

"Garfield Logan, but don't call me 'Garfield'! You can call me Gar."

"Tara Markov."

"Kory Anders," Kory said after quickly swallowing a mouthful of marshmallows and chocolate milk.

Taking his eyes off the bowl of Lucky Charm marshmallows (it seemed Kory had picked out every last one of them _again_, damnit), Rob grinned. "Rob Candide."

"Victor Stone," Vic tossed out before turning his giant mug up and draining its contents and standing to get a refill.

Having fetched some more orange juice from the refrigerator for himself, Noel offered the carton to Kate. After a second of the girl's expectant stare, he rolled his eyes. "Look, just because the others are sometimes prone to slipups," at this he glanced between Nigel and Gar, "doesn't mean I'm willing to trust you with my name simply on the basis of wanting to get it out of the way early. You're going to have to earn it."

Having taken the proffered carton and poured herself a glass—she'd grown quite attached to this stuff while staying with Jason, and eating dry Cheerios had made her insanely thirsty—she shrugged at No...er, Savior's explanation. Besides, no one else felt really bothered by it. "So you all have two names?"

Victor nodded. "Yeah—well, everyone except Rae, anyway—the one we were given by our parents and the one we chose as an alias to use when we're in battle. We don't want the bad guys to show up at our relatives' homes..." Noel might have disagreed—probably about the fact that his father was one of the 'bad guys,' but he forced that thought down and kept silent about it.

"Oh. When do I get one?"

Victor, Gar, and Rob traded a grin. Luckily for Kate, Tim stopped them before they could attempt to give her one in some backwards game of World's Worst. "You'll have to think up one for yourself—I really don't think you want them helping," he grinned, pointing at the three in question.

Sticking his fork into his tofu, Gar flicked some of it in Tim's direction. "Well since we can't do that, what about twenty questions?"

"But we don't have the lasso."

"I don't think it matters, Fearless."

After a quick argument, the group decided on how the questions were going to be distributed. Tim would get three questions since he had seniority, Victor, Raven, and Savior would get three as well, and everyone else would get two. By toss up, Gar got to go first.

"Ok, let's see. What's the most embarrassing thing you remember?"

Thinking back, Kate grinned. "I woke up in my underwear in the snow one morning outside of Jason Blood's home. He says I sleep-walk."

"...Ooook. Are you willing to try tofu?"

"What's tofu?"

Gar pointed to his plate, sliding it across the table towards her. Kate sniffed it once before wrinkling her nose. "Nunuh." Looking wounded, Gar pulled his plate back. It was Tara's turn.

"What's your favorite food, so far?"

"I'd have to say that it's pizza."

"Vanilla or rocky road?"

Kate raised an eyebrow. Neither of those made sense. "Huh?"

Victor grinned. "Ha! Sorry Tara, my turn. Ok, who's funnier—me or BB?"

"Beast Boy," Kate answered, glancing between the two.

Gar jumped up from the table and promptly began dancing. "Go Beast Boy, it's your birthday, go BB..."

"What? Why?" Victor yelled, then groaned. "No Tim, that doesn't count man!"

Tim grinned. "Sorry Vic, but both of them count."

"Beast Boy is more hyperactive and enthusiastic, from what I've seen. Your humor is good, but his is just funnier," she answered, looking around the table to see who would go next.

"Would you prefer a room facing the sun in the morning or in the evening?" asked Kory.

"Evening! Please tell me I can have one facing it in the evening. I want to sleep in."

"Will you break the fourth wall as often as our friend Robert?"

Kate shook her head. "I don't think I know how."

"You'll learn," Noel grinned. It was his turn now, but there was one problem that the others seemed to have overlooked: what do you ask a girl who doesn't remember anything earlier than a few weeks ago? "What would you do if you woke up tomorrow morning and remembered everything before you came to in the morgue?"

"I don't know," Kate shrugged. "I don't think I can though."

Noel was tempted to ask what she meant, but knew that her answer would be vague at best. "If you did remember and it conflicted with who you are now, which way would you choose to be?"

"I like who I am now... It's all I know. But I don't know how I would react."

"Ok. I'll pass my third question to Raven."

"I will ask both of my questions now," Nigel stated, drawing the girl's attention. "Who do you believe has the coolest costume and what do you want yours to look like?"

Looking around the table and scrutinizing those there carefully, Kate answered. "Tim has the best, with you and Savior tied for second place. Victor doesn't have a costume, Gar's lacks much detail, Tara's and Rob's look like normal clothes, and neither Kory's nor Raven's appeal to me—except for the cloak thingie. Tim's looks like it's had the most thought put into it. And I get a nifty costume too?"

"I'll see what I can do," Tim agreed before asking his first question. "Raven can ask her questions later, so it's my turn. If I ordered you to stay here and someone on patrol called in for backup and no one else could respond for some reason, would you disobey my orders and go?"

"Hey wait! How come I don't get questions?" Rob asked, glaring at Tim.

Tim shrugged. "You didn't disagree at the time. Kate...?"

Frowning, Kate thought about it for a moment. "If they asked for help and I was the only one who could, then yes."

Tim nodded—this was probably the best answer he could hope for, given the conditions of his question. "Ok. If you were forced to choose between saving a team-mate or an innocent bystander, which would it be?"

"I don't know—both if I could. That question leaves too many possibilities open."

Finally, it had come down to the last question—the one that seemed to go to all the new recruits and would pretty much decide whether they would be officially indoctrinated into the team or not. "How do you like your eggs?"

Kate raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "I don't have a preference. I've had omelets, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs, and uh... sunny-side-up eggs. They're all good, but I don't really prefer one above the others."

Tim looked around the table at the rest of those gathered. "All opposed?" he asked. No one raised their hand. He had a feeling Raven would have been opposed, but the group would have outvoted her.

Though he didn't raise his hand, Savior spoke. "I abstain."

Tim nodded, that would still make it one opposed eight for and one abstain. "Ok. Congratulations, you're an honorary Teen Titan. Welcome aboard."

"I am?" she asked, looking around the table and getting nods. "Sweet! What's that mean?"

Half of the table sweat-dropped. "It means you can officially be on the team when you've given yourself a pseudonym, have an outfit, get some practice in, and show us you're worth keeping around," Savior answered.

Kate grinned. "When do I start practicing?"

"Right after some tests."

"Entry KR-01 by Timothy Drake—Robin. This entry contains preliminary results of the tests on our newest... 'guest,' Kate Rivers, alias..." Tim paused the entry, regarding the girl several feet away who was currently attempting to lift a steel bar with what looked to have close to two-hundred and fifty pounds worth of weight on it—she was struggling, but it was moving. Suddenly, she dropped the bar and the weights came crashing down to the floor, narrowly missing her feet.

"I don't think I can lift that," she mumbled, turning to regard Tim. "Sorry about the noise."

"It's not a problem. Have you decided what you want to call yourself—I need an alias to put on my reports."

"Um," Kate frowned, scanning her mind for something that would work. She was about to tell Tim that she hadn't the faintest idea what to call herself when something half-remembered from a dream poked its head above the surface-water of Kate's thoughts. "Medley." She didn't know why, but it felt right—like she'd had the name all her life.

Tim raised an eyebrow, thinking it over. "That works," he agreed, turning his recorder back on. "Kate Rivers, alias 'Medley'. Subject is 19 years of age and approximately 5'2", weighing 109 pounds. When we first encountered Kate, it was during a battle with a sludge monster that falls under Gauntlet's definition of a 'Mortimer'. Apparently, Savior dislocated her shoulder in an attempt to save her life and she lost consciousness. Later in the battle, Scalpel relocated the shoulder and I assume the pain was enough to cause her to regain most of her senses. Scalpel's report of his observation of the events states that a pair of orange symbols appeared on her forehead before she disappeared—probably teleported—only to reappear in the air in front of Mortimer. Three massive wings—for lack of a better word—in the same shape and color as the crests on her forehead appeared in the air behind her and she completely eradicated Mortimer with one shot from the weapon formed by them. Apparently, this was more than her body could handle and she collapsed, falling to the street. Being the closest, Gauntlet attempted to catch her with his power and missed, but still managed to catch her by hand.

"Upon Scalpel's insistence, she was brought into Titan Tower so he could watch over her until she recovered. After trying to draw blood a reaction occurred which caused the sample to rupture and I quarantined the Tower after discovering that the cause of the problem was a deadly virus. After several hours of research, we managed to figure out that the virus works by attaching to red blood cells to feed on the oxygen they carry and then multiply, and a byproduct of this is that the plasma between blood cells solidifies into a crystalline state. Oddly enough though, Kate's version of the virus seems to have mutated so that it requires light to be present for the reaction to occur—otherwise, it's completely inactive. Further tests conducted at Star Labs concluded that the virus dies after six hours if injected into another host."

Tim paused, watching now as Kate paced the room—up one wall, along the ceiling, and down another. It seemed she was attempting to test how long she could use her fluke ability. "After a call to Jason Blood made by Raven, he took Kate back to his manor to teach her how to use her power at will. Apparently, he succeeded. Based on what he learned, we now know that the abilities Kate uses are random each time she decides to channel one. So far, besides the wings, she has used teleportation, energy manipulation, gravity manipulation—which somehow got stuck and is now always on but don't ask me how though—and some ability that recharged her energy stores. The fluke gravity manipulation ability allows her to walk up walls, along ceilings (as she's currently doing now), designate a target with enough mass as a gravity center and "fall" towards it emulating short flight, and alter her field to move as if in a zero-gravity environment. We don't yet know the limit of this ability.

"Besides the fluke power, Kate possesses four silver bracelets—a pair to each wrist—two of which can transform into a sword (though I suspect that the other pair can act as a secondary weapon or some other tool) and allow her to read and speak dead languages. On a side note: Kate's medical records list her as deceased. I think this has a lot to do with her amnesia, not to mention the abilities she is using. She can speak, but when she first came to us she could neither read nor write. I think she's at a first-grade reading level at the moment, thanks to Jason Blood's tutelage. Also, I would like to mention that her records also list her as being a meta-human before she died—an empath similar to Raven, though nowhere near as powerful. Blood says she gets headaches around crowds, so we're going to have to be mindful of that if we ever take her into the city.

"Back to the random abilities—she knows how to use them, but at the moment her body does not possess the kind of endurance or energy reserves to fuel most of them for a prolonged period of time. In comparison: Starfire's body works similarly to Superman in that she can convert solar energy into energy her body can use for her strength, flight, and starbolts. Kate, on the other hand, doesn't have this alternate power source, so her body must supply the energy needed to fuel her abilities—similar to Terra or the Flashes. If she somehow tapped into something similar to the Speed Force as she was dying, this might be explainable... but I'm at a complete loss as to what that could be. We need to figure out what happened in those last hours before she died. Until then, until we can send her and one of the team to Metropolis to check around, we're going to train her as per Blood's request. More data will be added to this as it comes."

Putting down the small recording device he had been dictating into, Tim gathered up a bag full of sparring gear and motioned Kate to follow him into the next room. He threw the bag into a corner and led her onto a mat in the center of the room where he then began to outline her workout and practice schedule for the foreseeable future. "Since Blood pretty much gave me free reign to train you as I see fit, this is how it's going to be: I expect you to be up by 6:00 every morning—" He silenced her with a glare that would have done his mentor proud when she made to whine. "You will be here no later than 6:30 and will spend at least an hour doing stretches, sit-ups, crunches, push-ups, pull-ups, squats and whatever else I can think of. You'll start out doing twenty of each of these and add ten each week until you get to one-hundred, then you're free to tack on as many more as you like."

Tim grinned—he was enjoying being the one to set one of these mildly insane regimens for a change. The other Titans had set up their own workout schedules and after years of working under Batman's scrutinizing gaze, he felt he was being pretty lenient. Thankfully, this wouldn't hamper his schedule any since he was having her practice at the same time. "After your warm up, you will then practice basic unarmed self-defense. Since I usually practice early in the mornings anyway, I'll be here to direct and teach you martial arts. After unarmed practice, you can either use the treadmill or go outside and run laps around the tower for half an hour and then you run the obstacle course. You've got a sword, right? After your jog, on Mondays and Wednesdays you'll practice using it against me, on Tuesdays and Thursdays against Nigel since he is also familiar with bladed weapons."

Pausing a moment to make sure she'd caught all of that, Tim continued. "Once you're finished with that, you'll go over recordings and recreations of past battles with Savior, Cy, or Raven to learn basic battle strategy. After that, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want for the rest of the day, but if you feel up to it you should attempt to repeat the stretches and unarmed practice with a punching bag in the evenings. Oh, and you'll be sparring against one of us drawn from a lot on Fridays, so you won't know who it is until you're actually there. I'll put you on the roster to start going out on patrol with the rest of the team at the end of the month, depending on how much you've improved. As you've probably noticed, there isn't a strict dietary regimen that we have to follow but you should probably watch what you eat. Until I know for sure exactly how your powers work, it would be best if you tried to stay away from too much junk food and sweets—though that will be harder than it sounds with all of the crap we've got in the fridge. Got all that?"

Kate nodded. "Uh-huh. It sounds like a lot."

"It's not really, not compared to what Batman put me through. So are you ready?"

"Yeah."

Tim sat down and directed Kate how to do leg stretches. "One last thing: no using your abilities during these workouts."

A little over two hours later, as Tim had to spend time showing Kate how to do each exercise properly so as to keep from hurting herself, Tim announced that they were done with the initial warm-up and made his way over to the bag he'd thrown into a corner when they walked in. He brought it back to the mat and opened it, tossing several white objects at his student: foot, hand, head, and shin guards—sparring gear. Pulling out his own set of red gear, he quickly donned them while showing Kate how to put hers on. When they were finished, they stood and Tim began instructing her in martial arts.

"No, no—stand more like _this_, with your hands here and here," he said, attempting to correct a poor stance a few moments later. He had opted to teach her one of the simpler forms of martial arts for the time being—Tae Kwon Do, since it was probably the easiest to pick up, but no less devastating to an opponent—though with many suggestions and personal preferences Batman had given and instilled into Tim's own style of fighting. It wasn't one of the fancier styles, but it was by far one of the simplest to learn and many others could be built off of some of the same general stances and moves.

"Try to always stay moving—shift around, move around your target, stay on the balls of your feet and not flatfooted, and try not to lean your head and upper body forward or back when getting ready to throw a kick or a punch. That's called 'telegraphing' and gives me a pretty good idea of what you're going to do next." Checking her movements over once more, Tim noted that she had taken it all in correctly, though something seemed off. A little more observation on his part showed that Kate was unconsciously tapping into her fluke ability, and this wouldn't do. It meant that she wasn't fully aware of herself and could be caught off guard easily. Timing his next move carefully, Tim quickly lashed out with a roundhouse to her side which sent her flying sideways halfway across the room until she realized what she was doing and let go... which resulted in a sort of half-cartwheel side flip that landed her on her side.

Kate stood and dusted herself off before resuming her place in the ring with Tim. "I was bouncing?"

Tim nodded. "Yeah. You need to learn to keep very precise control over your abilities. I'll see about having you train with Raven or Kory, depending on whose power matches yours the closest. I doubt that it works similar to Tara's, but we can't rule anyone out at this point. We'll conduct a few more tests this afternoon. Until then..."

Kate rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. You get to beat me up 'cause Jason Blood told you to. At least you don't rhyme while you do it."

"Hey, I'm not beating you up. 'Beating you up' would be doing to you what Savior _asked_ for when he first joined. He made me beat him nearly to death before Kory forced us to stop."

Kate winced. "Ouch."

"Yeah," Tim grinned. "He's always been a bit of a glutton for punishment. Now, come at me. I'll only be blocking so you can get a feel for attacking."

Nodding, Kate launched into a series of punches and kicks, making sure to keep what Tim had said in mind and trying not to attack too predictably. Every last one of them was soundly blocked, despite her best efforts to the contrary. After several moments of this, Kate stopped. "This is kind of fun."

Seeing her guard had dropped, Tim promptly threw a side-kick towards her midsection. He was only mildly surprised when her hand intercepted his foot inches from impacting with her stomach. "That's good. Let's try it the other way around. I'll attack, you block." So saying, he took a half-step in and threw a quick set of reverse and straight punches to her solar-plexus, which knocked the air from her lungs and forced her to stumble back. After giving her time to catch her breath, he continued throwing intermittent attacks at the girl, though he was only going at about half speed. Having her block a good half of these and take the rest of them without complaint was rather impressive for her first outing—even if he was taking it easy on her.

After their short sparring match, Tim put away the gear and the pair exited the room. After stopping to pick up her socks and shoes, Tim explained that Kate could start jogging and practicing with her sword the next day. At the moment though, he wanted to test her fluke power a bit more, and so the two of them met up with Kory before heading outside. Once outside, Tim explained what he had in mind. "You've only used that ability indoors, right?" he asked, and seeing her nod he continued. "Ok, so you haven't gotten a chance to see what its limits are. I want you to jump as high as you can. If you fall, Kory will be there to catch you."

Kory waved, smiling. "Do not fear, friend Kate. I shall strive not to drop you."

Taking a deep breath, Kate sighed. "Gee, that's _very_ reassuring. Well, let's get this over with then," she mumbled before turning her eyes towards the top of the Tower and opening herself to the fluke ability as much as she dared. Her initial takeoff proved to be far faster than she had expected and she was quickly propelled nearly a quarter of the height of the Tower. A glance towards the ground proved her undoing though as her hold over her own gravity slipped, and she quickly reversed directions. Her resulting scream, before Kory caught her, drew the attention of half the team to the large windows that looked out over the island.

Once her feet were back on the ground Kate glared at Tim. "Please tell me we're not doing that again."

"One more," Tim answered, grin plastered firmly in place.

To say his next test was a bit ridiculous would have been an understatement. "You want me to what!"

"Sprint the length of the tower and jump as far as you can towards the bay."

Kate groaned, but turned and marched to the other end of the Tower. "If I get wet I'm blaming you!" she yelled, taking off into a run before launching herself off the edge of the tower. Again, Kory didn't miss. No, this time, Kate's hand slipped from hers as it was quite sweaty. Kate made a noise akin to a squawk before it was cut off by a resounding splash upon impact.

"Dude, that water's got to be like fifty below," Gar commented later in the evening as the group had gathered in the Titans' living room.

Tim shrugged; earning one more in a series of glares thrown at him by the disgruntled girl currently huddled in a blanket on the floor in front of their couch. "I **will** get you back for that," she muttered around chattering teeth, pulling the electric blanket tighter.

Trading a look with Vic and Gar, Rob grinned. "So, should we..."

"You are not going to attempt the ritual of hazing, are you?" Kory asked, glancing between her teammates.

"What's hazing?"

This drew grins from all present, save for Kory and Kate, as she'd been the one to ask. "I thought Tim had already started," Victor commented, throwing a glance at Tim.

"I'd say she passed the leap of faith, though she wasn't blindfolded at the time so I don't think it counts. And we've done twenty questions already..."

Raven looked almost eager as she withdrew a blindfold from nowhere. Today was starting to look up after all. Of course, they'd planned all of this the previous night upon returning home from their battle with Plasmus. Somehow, he had escaped yet _again_ and then had attempted to eat and/or destroy various parts of downtown. It had broken down into several smaller portions of itself as soon as the Titans showed up and then scattered. Needless to say, finding all the pieces and herding them all together had been a real pain. Upon returning, it had been Tim of all people that broached the subject of using their newest guest as an extra set of eyes. Blood had requested they train her, but he never said how—which left it up to Tim to figure that out. His line of reasoning had been that as long as she was staying there, they might as well make use of her, and the whole trial-by-fire thing was a pretty proven process. After a real group vote, it had been decided that until she had a good grasp on how to control her abilities and wasn't a danger to herself or to the public, they would integrate her as a temporary member of the team—and then when that time came, if she wanted to stay, they would revise their vote. So they'd spent a couple of hours planning yet another hazing routine...

It seemed that the leap of faith didn't count after all, as Kate soon found herself blindfolded and who-knows-where though she had a feeling it was in one of the upper floors of the tower. "Why am I blindfolded again?"

Noel answered for her. "You're going to take a couple of steps forward and fall and one of us, by random drawing from the hat, will catch you. The point is to prove that you have such trust in us that you would place your life in our hands without question."

Kate took a step forward. "Whatever you saaaAY" ...She was closer to the edge than she'd thought.

Raven teleported herself into Kate's path and prepared to catch the girl before she got all the way down the tower. Halfway down, she made her catch and flew back up to the open window Kate had stepped out of. She set the girl down on her feet... only to have her knees buckle and almost fall back out. It seemed Kate had fainted.

She came to after having a glass of water thrown into her face and spluttered, attempting to stand. "That was fun. What next?" The blindfold was put back on and she was led back down into the living room, though she didn't know it. "Guys, where are you taking me?"

"We're here," Raven announced, also having drawn the lot to be the leader in this part of the hazing. It seemed luck was with her today...or maybe just a hint of magic. After her teammates had lined up, she grinned and waited. It wouldn't be long...

"Uh... what are we doing?"

That was it. "A test."

At this range, Kate could _feel_ the mischief flowing off of the team in waves. Needless to say, it frightened her just a tad bit. "What do you call this test?"

"The Unblinking Eye."

That didn't sound so bad. "Oh, ok. What do I do?"

Raven smirked. "Just walk forward," she answered, giving Kate a shove in the right direction. Nine solid WHACK!s later, Kate stood at the other end of the line, hands furiously trying to rub away the stinging on her bottom.

"Oww. Please tell me that's all I had to do." Poor, naïve Katie.

"Certainly. We have another test: Crossing the Desert," Raven answered again from behind Kate, as she had followed the girl so that she would again be the first one to get in her shot.

"What do I have to do now?" She found out when Raven turned her around and shoved her in the other direction. By now, Kate's bum was quite tender. The third time was it for Kate though. As Raven turned her around for the fourth run through ("The Paddling of the Swollen Ass with Paddles") she furrowed her brow. "Please teleport, please teleport, please teleport," she muttered under her breath, opening herself to her power. Raven shoved her in as the knowledge of how to use her newest temporary ability sped across her consciousness. It wasn't teleporting, as she'd hoped, but it would do just as well.

Raven pulled back her paddle and let it fly, throwing a good bit of her strength behind it this time... only to have it fly _through_ Kate and hit Rob in the face (as opposed to the crotch, since she'd swung at an upward angle). Rob didn't have time to put up a shield and was knocked to the floor, where he clutched his broken nose and moaned in agony. "I think I'm done," Kate grinned, pulling off the blindfold. Unfortunately, she'd made two fatal mistakes: first, she'd let her guard down, and secondly, she had let go of her newest ability and was now back to normal. Tim's paddle sent her running through to the tune of more thwacks and yelps of pain.

"Golth thwing oth dithmay," Rob managed to get out as Raven knelt to fix his nose.

"What was that?"

"Get Sthar ta do da golth thwing."

"'Get Star to do the golf swing?'" Raven asked, finishing up on his nose.

Rob nodded. "Yeth! I mean yes!"

"Do you want to be the one standing on the other side of her when Star swings if she phases again?"

"Uhh... no."

Shifting from foot to foot while using her fluke power to attempt to keep weight off of her legs and thus her now-red-again ass, Kate grinned. "Is that all for today?"

"No, there's still one more test," Tim answered.

Kate winced. "Does it involve hitting my rear with paddles?"

"Nope."

"I'm almost afraid to ask what this one is..."

Trading a glance, Gar, Vic, and Rob answered in tandem. "Overindulgence!"

Kate would soon wish it only involved the paddles. She'd looked confused when they led her into the kitchen where close to forty bottles of soy sauce sat in wait. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"Drink them aaaall!" Gar laughed, thrusting a pair of bottles into either of Kate's hands.

"This is the last test?" she asked, glancing between all the faces. After receiving nods all around, Kate shrugged. "Bottoms up."

"Go girl, go!" Vic chanted as she downed the first two. By the twentieth bottle, Kate was looking a bit green. By number thirty-two, her hands didn't want to take orders any more and managed to knock over a couple of bottles. Five bottles later...

Kate belched, letting the last bottle slip from her hand. "Am I done?" she croaked. Getting an affirmative, she nodded. "Good. Katie's gonna go puke now," she announced before making a mad dash (read as "drunken waddle") to the nearest trash can where she proceeded to empty the contents of her stomach.

"This makes me so proud," Rob grinned. Among the new Titans, only he had been able to complete this part of the hazing ritual... at the cost of a severe case of diarrhea. The sound of more retching filled the room.

After Kate finished purging her stomach and had washed her mouth out, Raven took her by the elbow and led her aside. Tara followed at her wave. It was their turn to ask perverted questions, damn it! Hey, even Raven could be swayed by the forces of mischief every once in a while. And though they didn't have Wonder Woman's lasso, having Kate mostly inebriated would be almost as useful. Making sure she had the girl's attention, Raven started in with her four questions. "I didn't get to ask questions this morning so I'm asking them now. First question: why did you go along with all of that?"

Kate gave up attempting to focus and just stood limply. "I dunno. Cause you wanted me to and I thought I should try to fit in as long as I'm darkening your chamber door."

Raven blinked and then continued. "Tim told me you gave yourself a name. Where did you come up with 'Medley'?

"Something I heard in a dream."

Seeing that Tara was getting impatient, Raven sighed. "Fine. I'll ask. Who is the most sexually appealing male member of our team?"

"No, no, no! It's 'which of the guys do you think would be the most fun for a good romp in bed!'" Tara corrected, _loudly_.

Nigel poked his head into the hallway, taking stock of the situation. "More questions?"

Tara grinned. "Yes, it's our turn. Now go away! And cover those big ears!" Watching Nigel retreat to a safe distance, she poked Kate. "Now, answer the question."

"What was the question? I forgot." Raven repeated her question and Kate nodded. She completely understood. "...What's 'sexually'?" Or not.

Tara resisted the urge to facefault. "You uh, you do know what sex is, right?"

Kate nodded, and then shook her head. "Nunuh."

Both Raven and Tara traded a look. There wasn't a chance in **_hell_** they were giving her 'the talk'. "Maybe we should get one of the guys..." Tara suggested.

Raven shook her head. "Are you _insane_! Can you imagine what would happen if Rob were to find out? Or Gar, or Victor..."

"It'd be like Hiroshima all over again if Savior ever found out?"

"EXACTLY! And who do you think he would blame?"

Tara shrugged. "It's not like he'd say anything. We both know he's whipped." Noel's head ducked into the hallway and he glanced between the three girls suspiciously. Tara waved. "Uh, hi."

"Why do I get the feeling you're talking about me behind my back?"

"Because you're paranoid?" Tara mumbled once he'd left before turning back to Raven and Kate. "So what do we do?"

Raven gave the matter some thought for a moment before a wicked gleam lit her eyes. "First, we finish here. Later, we find a video camera and apprise Robin or Savior of the situation. And then... **blackmail**."

"Since when are you this... devious?"

Raven shrugged. Since she was down to one question and Kate didn't seem to grasp certain key concepts surrounding more adult (and thus embarrassing) activities and such, she'd have to ask something else. Oh well. "What do you think you bring to the table as a potential new member for our team and do you think you can prove yourself and earn our trust?" Ok, so that was more like two questions, but she doubted anyone would care.

"I don't know. An extra set of hands? And I thought this whole thing was about doing just that."

"No, it's more like proving you trust us."

"Oh. Then I'll work at it. Can I please go sit down now? The room is moving and I'm having trouble telling which way is up."

The Titans had dispersed by the time Raven and Tara finished their interrogation. Vic, Gar, Nigel, and Rob were playing a racing game on the PlayCubeX (or whatever they decided to call it for the day), Kory had made off to her room with a large stack of anime dvds (Card Captor Sakura, by the look of it), Noel was reading while watching the foursome wage digital war, and Tim was uploading data to Oracle. After making sure Kate wasn't going to lose her sauce all over the carpet (again), Tara made her way into the kitchen to make a light snack while Raven decided to join Noel with a book of her own.

Glancing around, Kate stumbled over to the couch and sat down in front of it, leaning her head back onto the seat. The sound of several crashes and victory music signaled the end of the current race. Trading a quick glance between themselves, Rob gave up his controller and handed it over to Kate. "Here, try your luck with this."

Glancing dazedly between the controller and the screen, Kate selected a white and gold racer and the next race was begun. Her fingers still didn't want to obey the commands her brain sent to them though and her vision was mildly blurry. The errant fingers tottered across the buttons in some pattern only apparent to themselves.

A few moments later... "It was a fluke. Rematch!" Victor called, resetting the game from where it appeared Kate had somehow won, with Nigel coming in a close second. Victor and Gar's racers were scrap metal somewhere along the track. Beside and below him, Kate was sprawled along the floor, looking at the screen from the side. The controller slipped from her hand and her eyes slid closed. Onscreen, Kate's racer once more blew away everyone else's.

"Uh, Vic?"

"What Rob? We're a little busy."

"She's asleep man. I think you're racing the autopilot."

"...No way."

Rob grinned, picking up the dropped controller and resetting Kate's racer. After a moment of investigation, it was proved that Kate had somehow keyed in a cheat code that would turn on the game's hardest AI racer—a code that was only rumored about in the gaming world. "Think we should call this in?"

"What, that we got a new recruit drunk and she somehow punched in a developers' cheat that isn't officially documented? They'd laugh and then tell the reporters and we'd get in trouble," Gar pointed out. "And then Savior would yell at us for giving the media something else to talk about."

"So what should we do about her?" Victor asked, toeing Kate's prone form. She rolled onto her stomach and proceeded to drool on the carpet.

Nigel grinned. "We can leave her there. She looks comfortable."

The boys didn't notice the figure of a little girl nearly identical to Kate materialize on the end of the couch—of course, not very many would have. Seeing that she'd drawn Raven's attention, Medley waved. Raven squinted and went back to her book after obviously deciding that she'd been imagining things. Glancing down at her charge, Medley sighed. She would have to wait for Kate's body to flush the alcohol out of its system naturally before she could communicate with her again—great. She'd spent a good deal of energy bringing the girl back from the dead and here these morons were trying to kill off what few brain cells were back in use in Kate's head at the moment. Oh well, at least it gave her more time to observe the people that had taken Kate in. Finding something entertaining enough to hold her attention was a challenging task for a being over ten-thousand years old (which probably explains Pangloss's attitude...), and these video games looked worth at least five minutes of her time.

Once more, Kate was awoken rudely—this time by someone shaking her shoulder. Groaning, she rolled over onto her back and regarded Tim. Opening her eyes proved to be a mistake though as they felt like someone had stuck a hot poker into them. Shutting them tightly, Kate rolled back over—another mistake, as a blinding headache made its presence known. "Ugh," she moaned, sitting up and taking the glass of water Tim was offering. "Where's Nigel, I think I'm dying. Get him to put me out of my misery, _please_."

Grinning, Tim offered her a couple of small pills. "You aren't dying—you're hung over. That's what happens when you consume too much alcohol. Swallow these, they'll take the edge off of the headache."

Kate downed the proffered pills along with the rest of the water. "What alcohol? I thought you made me drink soy sauce?"

"Yeah," Tim nodded, grinning. "It's a tradition we started after Star drank a dozen of those and started feeling tipsy. We found out that soy sauce contains a small amount of alcohol... forty bottles of soy sauce is similar to going out and getting smashingly drunk. Since we weren't of legal drinking age at the time, we started using that for our overindulgence phase of the hazing. You aren't old enough to drink yet, so we couldn't just offer you booze."

Kate put her hand to her head and attempted to massage away the pain behind her eyes. "Why did you wake me up?"

"It's six. You're supposed to be in the gym in half an hour."

"...You're kidding me."

"Nope. Now get up and get ready. If you're late, I'll double everything."

Flopping back onto the floor (and narrowly missing a puddle of leftover drool), Kate groaned. "I don't think I like having you as my superior."

Tim shrugged, going into the kitchen. "Tough luck."

And so began Kate's stay at Titan Tower as a fledgling member of the team. But things could only get better from here, right? ...Right?

Author's Note: Yes, I realize it's been done before, but I decided to go with it anyway. It gave me a chance to have a little fun at my creation's expense and to introduce her other half, as it were. Next chapter, expect something a little more...uh... Wait, why am I giving you hints about the next chapter anyway? Want to find out, then you'll just have to stick around and read it when it comes out. I apologize to those of you reading this for the wait between the last chapter and this one. Things came up. My job is a serious distraction from my writing and I didn't want to post this one until I had a good start on part five. I hope it was worth the wait. The next chapter should make up for the lack of originality and the poor schedule keeping, I hope.


	5. Causality: Actions

**Gods' Playground**

05 – Causality: Actions

Kate groaned, leaning against the shower wall and getting the water flow as hot as she could stand it. She'd just finished another grueling day in what had quickly become dubbed 'Hell Week': six days of insanely fast-paced crash-course combat training. She was making it, but it was murder on her muscles. Everything between her scalp and her toes either throbbed or was numb and would probably make its displeasure at her previous actions known later. Her mornings had started just as Robin had said they would: basic exercises from 6:30 to 7:30, unarmed self-defense training for another hour and a half, her first run through the obstacle course (that had been a trial in and of itself), training to use her sword against Robin, and then 'Battle Tactics 090' (as Savior had dubbed it) with Cyborg. The obstacle course had, by far, been the worst.

Her objective: make it to the end of the course while trying not to be tagged by any of the stun drones or other such instruments of displeasure. She didn't make it a quarter of the way in before getting her first hit. Cue the flashback... "GO!" Savior yelled, which sent Kate dashing into the obstacle course. For a moment, she thought that perhaps the course had malfunctioned... that is, until the first blast from a popup stunner flew past her ear and struck the wall ahead. Then she could hear them—several dozen energy discharges firing off and nipping at her heels. Ignoring them, she gauged the distance to the wall ahead and her chances of making it up that wall without using her power: slim to none. Only feet before impact, she tapped into her gravity manipulation ability and jumped, which sent her flying to the top of the wall. Ahead, she could see the end of the mud pit and her next objective. Not wanting to risk falling into the man-made pit for fear of what could be lurking in its depths, she touched down on top of the wall and jumped again... or would have, had two blasts not caught her in the back and sent her tumbling face-first down into the very pit she'd been hoping to avoid with a resounding splat. She had stood and attempted to make her way back to the Tower, but was intercepted by a trio of converted Slade-drones. Obviously, Savior had other plans in mind for her. After realizing that complaining and/or attempting to leave wouldn't get her out of it, she'd just given up and gone through the rest of the course—thrice. It got slightly better after the first day though, in that she knew what was expected of her now. Besides, the faster she made it through the course, the faster she got back to the showers... and she had desperately needed one after that first-day's mud bath. Getting yelled at in that way that wasn't really yelling because he didn't raise his voice when he did it by Savior for trying to quit the course might have had something to do with it also. End flashback.

Yawning, she eventually cut off the spray and proceeded to dry and dress. The fact that she had been unable to sleep well for the past few days wasn't helping. For some reason, she had been waking up in the middle of the night either with a massive headache or just not tired any more. Making a mental note to ask Nigel about it later, she left the showers and made her way towards the kitchen, thoughts of food occupying her mind. Speaking of food, she had quickly learned to fend for herself in the kitchen because more often than not, any time the group was together for a meal, things got rowdy to say the least. Yesterday's food fight at dinner was a prime example of just how rowdy things could get... Raven had been the only one not sporting lumpy mashed potatoes or green jello, though only because she could put up shields. Perhaps after a bite to eat she might be able to catch a nap.

Kate's soon to be hunt for something edible was cut short as she entered the Titans' living area where the majority of the group (save for Tim, Kory, and Nigel as the three of them were currently on patrol (somehow, they had all wound up on today's schedule together)—which made since due to the fact that Kate needed to ask Nigel about the headaches anyway) was giving orders to Gar, who was attempting to write everything down on a notepad to keep it straight. "Ok, so that was one order of Thai noodles, two large meat-lovers' pizzas, five Big Macs—"

"No! Five meat-lovers', two Big Macs!" Victor broke in quickly.

Gar blinked, but corrected his list and ran through it again. Finally getting an ok, he sighed with relief and turned towards the elevators before spotting Kate. "I knew we forgot someone," he muttered, also drawing the attention of those there to the freshly-showered girl.

Kate began to wilt under the team's scrutiny. "What? Do I have something on my face?" she asked, covertly trying to make sure no 'nose goblins' as Gar had called them were clinging to her.

After a moment, Victor broke the silence. "Why don't you take new-girl downtown with you and show her around?" he suggested, grinning. "She could use the exercise."

Gar shrugged and made for the elevator. "Sure. Can I take the T-Car?"

"NO!" came a chorus of answers.

"You guys are no fun," Gar grumbled as Kate joined him and they were on their way.

* * *

The pair neared the city limits in silence... and it was beginning to drive Gar nuts. Gar didn't know what he could talk about with the amnesiac beside him and Kate simply didn't have anything interesting on her mind—literally. Finally, Gar entered into a state of mind that his friends knew could be potentially dangerous: he got bored. This time, it manifested itself as a sudden urge to take to the rooftops of Jump City, which wasn't altogether uncommon. And besides, Cy had said to show her around, and what better way to do so than by air? Grinning, he took off ahead of Kate and transformed into one of his more common forms for air patrols—that of a hawk. "Race you to the top!" he called before starting his ascent.

Kate, standing beside him at the time, had picked up on his abrupt mood shifts from slightly bored, to dangerously bored, to mischievous and had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. This turn of events took her off guard and it took a second to figure out what he meant, before she caught on that he was circling his way up towards the top of a nearby building—easily the height of Titan Tower. Grinning, she ran after the changeling before coming to what she judged an acceptable distance to the building, then tapped into her power and jumped. Her takeoff proved much the same as it was the time she had tried to scale the Tower, though this time she knew about what to expect and kept her cool. Somewhere around a quarter of the way up the building, she arced slightly in her trajectory before her feet came into contact with its safety-glass windows, where she kicked off again and was sent flying further upward. If one were to shift their angle of view so that it appeared Kate was running across instead of up, it would look almost as though she were playing hopscotch.

At the top, Gar was surprised when he looked down to find Kate flying (falling upwards with style, really) directly at him—so surprised in fact that he let out a very inhuman squawk (which sounded about right for his current form though) and banked hard to his right. Half a second later, Kate flew through the airspace Gar had been occupying, laughing all the way, before catching sight of the building's roof and letting gravity mostly reclaim her before landing with a thump. Standing from her crouch, she grinned at Gar who had landed nearby. "That was fun."

"The landing could use some work. I'd give it a five."

Kate stuck out her tongue before looking around. "Which way?"

Gar pointed deeper into the city. "We've got to make about four stops, but they're all pretty close together."

"Oh," Kate nodded, then a question came to mind. "Ga—"

Gar interrupted her with a hand over her mouth. "Shh! Out here we go by our codenames. It's Beast Boy, remember?" Sure, they rarely had to use codenames inside of the Tower, but once outside they guarded their identities fiercely.

Once Ga...er Beast Boy had removed his hand from over her mouth, Kate quickly apologized. "Sorry, I thought since we were alone it wouldn't matter."

"Yeah, but that's the problem. There's almost always some creepy guy with a camera and a recorder hiding in the shadows somewhere waiting for us to do something that would look good on the Six O' Clock News. So what were you going to ask?"

"Oh yeah. Why doesn't everyone just go out and get their own stuff instead of sending one or two people after it?"

He shrugged. "We do—but sometimes we like to take turns with it. Actually, half of the time someone winds up cooking. My turn! You figured out how to keep from falling?" Seeing her questioning look, Beast Boy elaborated. "When you tried to do the same thing when Robin asked you to, you fell, right?"

"Oh, that! Yeah," Kate nodded. "I guess I just needed to relax. Robin makes me nervous—and Savior. It's like everything's a test to see how I measure up, and I don't think I'm cutting it."

Beast Boy grinned. "Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how it is, especially with Savior. He's really anal about things sometimes, especially with people new to their powers. Robin's cutting you a lot of slack that Savior isn't, since he's giving you the benefit of the doubt. And we don't expect you to just jump right into it and amass several years' worth of experience in a couple of weeks. The best thing to do is just stop worrying so much and let things come naturally, the rest will follow."

Nodding again, Kate glanced towards the neighboring rooftop along their path. "So you're saying I should just have fun with it? Turn it into a game?"

"If that's what it takes. It got you up here, didn't it?"

"That works for me," Kate grinned, taking off for the next building.

Gar blinked, watching as she made the jump between buildings easily and kept going. "Hey, wait up!" he called finally, hurrying after the girl and keeping a mental note of her progress. He had noticed something that might need to be brought up with the others later. It seemed that though Kate had a decent grasp over her manipulation of gravity, she didn't have the balance necessary to make better use of it. He himself had taken a while to get used to his own powers, and shifting forms from a human to an animal with a completely different center of balance had been confusing before he got the hang of it.

* * *

Half an hour later found Beast Boy and Kate—or Medley, as it were—at yet another fast food establishment. Fifteen pounds of food stood stacked in boxes and plastic bags arranged haphazardly on the counter top, and they were about to add to that. Kate stood by the door, as far from the line of customers as possible, admiring the miniature indoor water garden which was this restaurant's most reputed attraction besides the food. The mounting frustration from the forward-most customers peaked when Beast Boy had to repeat his order for a third time because the ink on his notepad had smeared a bit and he had been in a hurry when he wrote it in the first place. Someone's temper finally snapped.

"HEY BUDDY! Hurry it along, would ya? Some of us have _real_ jobs and don't have all day to waste dicking around here!"

Beast Boy's hackles rose but he ignored the rude man behind him and finally got the order straightened out before stepping to the side so they could move on to the next person's order. He also ignored the next few muttered nasty comments the rude businessman threw his way.

From her place at the display, Kate shook her head and watched as a few coy swam along beneath her, idly pondering why it was that most of those funnily-dressed people in the suits always seemed so frustrated and rude. Being in such close proximity to several other people just like the exceptionally rude businessman had started to foul her own mood, so Kate attempted to strengthen the weak walls separating her mind from the rest of the world. Perhaps that was why she didn't notice trouble coming their way until it was right on top of her.

Outside, a girl perhaps a year or so Kate's senior stumbled up the sidewalk, the lunch hour crowds giving her as wide a berth as they could and still manage to keep out of the street. And who could blame them for doing so? The girl in question was dirty, her dress and blouse torn in places and blood ran down one side of her face, obscuring one of her eyes from view. The way her breath heaved and her hands clutched at her chest told not only of her physical exertion—that she had run this far from wherever she had come—but of the fact that she had minor internal injuries of some sort. A deep bruise could be seen just above her right knee, the skin already swollen and discolored. It was probably a small miracle that whatever it was had missed the joint and it hadn't been ruined. Panic fueled her motions and it had convinced her brain to release enough of its own natural chemicals that she wouldn't be feeling that injury any time soon.

Kate's head jerked up the moment the girl's hand came into contact with the door, which she'd used to steady herself in order to keep moving. Despite her blocks, panic flooded Kate's system, threatening to overwhelm her. Her heartbeat and breath quickened and she desperately wanted to run—somewhere, _anywhere_—but as it was, she was frozen to the spot. "Beast Boy," she finally croaked, drawing his and a few nearer patrons' attention.

Beast Boy quickly stood, making his way over to Kate who had by now started sweating. "What is it?"

"Outside," Kate answered. By now, the feeling was starting to fade as the girl walked further from her position, but it had been so _intense_. It had overwhelmed her senses, held her torn between fight or flight, and the conflict between those two desires had nearly brought her to her knees.

Leaving Medley to gather her wits, Beast Boy dashed outside and glanced around before catching sight of what had probably upset her. He ran up the street, quickly catching up to the girl and assessing her injuries. "Hey, what happened to you? Are you alright?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder lightly to get her attention. The girl's face came up and her eyes locked with his, and for an instant Gar could see what had gotten to Kate. Then, as abruptly as it had come, her expression changed to one of relief as she latched onto Beast Boy for all she was worth. It wasn't until she spoke that he recognized her.

"Please, it's my dad, you have to help him! Something terrible has happened, please," Kitten Walker sobbed, collapsing to her knees.

Kate, who had managed to get herself together enough to exit the restaurant, had caught the last part of this. She could feel the relief coming from the other girl, and it helped to ease the residual effects of her earlier exposure to the girl's terror. "Who is she?" she asked of Beast Boy, who was helping Kitten to stand and directing her to enter the building they'd just vacated.

After getting her seated, Beast Boy asked for the establishment's first aid kit and set about cleaning the wound on Kitten's forehead. It was shallow, but long. After rinsing the blood away, he used a pair of tweezers to dig out a couple of small pieces of glass. "Her name is Kitten Walker and her dad is Drury Walker—better known as Killer Moth." Here, he paused to gauge Kate's reaction to the name. Seeing no sign recognition cross her face, he turned back to his task of bandaging Kitten's wound. "She, her dad, and her boyfriend Fang—this dude with a spider for a head—caused some problems for the team a few years back, but after we got them the attorneys couldn't make anything stick, so she got out. We haven't heard anything about any breakouts lately, so her dad is probably out on parole or something. What happened?" he asked, directing the last part at Kitten, now aware that he should be suspicious of her motives despite the physical evidence to the contrary that this could be some sort of ruse.

Staring down at her hands, Kitten shrugged. "I don't know. I came home and dad wasn't there. I thought he may just be in the basement, so I took the stairs down to the lab. It was dark and smelled like there had been another electrical fire. The floor was covered with water. Then I heard something just as it dropped from the ceiling. I tried to back away, but it hit me. I think my head hit something... I'm not sure. I just remember getting up and running up the stairs, out of the house, and as far as I could get from it. The next thing I know, here I am." Here she paused, looking up to Beast Boy in near desperation. "I think it got my dad. Please... You're a Titan, you have to help me find him!"

Standing, Beast Boy glanced at Kate before pulling out his T-Communicator and scrolled through the list of other T-Comms. The first number he tried was for Robin's. After not getting an answer for a few seconds, he tried the next number down, then the next, until finally giving up on reaching them any time soon. Something had probably come up—maybe even a call about whatever it was that had snagged Drury Walker and beat up his daughter. Re-dialing Robin's communicator, he left a message apprising their leader of the situation and requesting that he get back to them as soon as possible. Putting the yellow T-Comm away, Beast Boy turned back to Kitten and Kate. "Ok, we'll help. Can you walk?"

Kitten stood, favoring her bruised leg, and made her way out of the building followed closely by Kate. Beast Boy followed last, after asking that the owner hold their orders until they returned.

* * *

"This is the place?"

"Yeah," Beast Boy nodded, in answer to Kate's question as Kitten led the way in. He had been here before and on the outside it hadn't changed much. Taking in the general state of destruction of the rooms they saw, Beast Boy attempted to piece together what had happened. Something about all of this wasn't adding up for him, but he didn't have enough information to guess what it was yet. "Was it like this when you got home?"

Kitten shook her head, flipping the switch for the stair lights and beginning her descent. "No, this is new."

They made their way down into the basement lab and Kitten gave the light switch there an experimental flip before deciding that it was useless. The only light came from the glow of a few monitors and a couple of unbroken UV lamps. It seemed the overhead lighting had been trashed. She made sure the switch was securely on the 'OFF' position before stepping down off the last step into water almost over her toes. "This is where I found it," she started, pointing towards the ceiling and tracing a path with her finger to the floor. "That's where it dropped from the ceiling."

Beast Boy turned to Kate and motioned her closer for a moment. "Keep an eye on her, would you? If it comes back, take her and get out." Seeing the girl nod her understanding, he grinned before putting on his best Sherlock look, complete with pipe and funny hat. "Now, help me look for clues."

Missing the reference, Kate shrugged and watched as Beast Boy started sniffing around for evidence/clues as a dog of some sort—a Bassett hound, but she wouldn't have known that. She took a couple of steps forward before turning in a circle to take in the whole room. Something about one of the far corners seemed to call her attention. "Hey, Beast Boy, what's this?" she asked, looking down on a computer screen. The monitor was on its side and cracked, but its display still worked.

From his place across the room where he'd found a pile of...goop that smelled interesting to say the least, Beast Boy reverted to his human form and gave it a prod with his fingers before taking a sample in a discarded test tube nearby. "What's it say?" he asked, forgetting whom he was talking to for a moment.

Kate turned her gaze on the screen and tried to make out the letters displayed there. It read **C. H. A. R. A. X. E. S.** Sounding it out in her head first, Kate shrugged before attempting to read it aloud. "Sh—no, Chairaches... that doesn't make sense. Char axes?"

"Charaxes?"

"Maybe. It still doesn't make sense though."

Beast Boy stood, pocketing the sample. Something about that name sounded familiar. He made his way over to the terminal and looked it over himself. "Yeah, Charaxes... that's a phylum name for.. moths," he mumbled, clicking the mouse once. The display changed, letters scrolling down below those already present to form more words.

'**C**hemical **H**ybrid **A**ccelerated **R**etroviral **A**rthropodal E**x**perimental **E**volutionary **S**erum.'

Beast Boy blinked and re-read it before pulling out his T-Comm and transferring all of the salvageable data from the computer. "I think we should go," he mumbled, standing quickly and making his way to the stairs. Kitten followed him up, followed closely by Kate.

"What did you find?" Kitten asked, noting that Beast Boy was quickening his pace.

"I don't know yet, but—" he was cut off by Kate stumbling on the steps below and using the closest thing to catch her balance, Kitten's arm, which in turn nearly pulled the other girl down. "Are you two ok?" he asked, helping Kitten back to her feet as Kate stabled herself on the stair railing.

Shaking her head to clear it, Kate frowned. "I felt something... weird."

His eyes narrowing, Beast Boy poked his head out of the door leading back into the main house slowly, taking in as much of the surrounding visible rooms as he could. "Any idea what it was?"

"No. I haven't felt anything like it before. It felt... disordered, chaotic. And there's something else. It felt like fear, but it stopped almost as soon as it started."

"Do you still feel it? Any idea how close it is?" he asked quickly, still looking around.

Kate turned her head from side to side as though to find something she could barely hear. "Outside. Whatever it is, it's strong. It doesn't feel like it's getting closer though, or moving much." She gestured roughly back the way they had come. "That way, somewhere."

With a nod, Beast Boy made his way quietly out of the stairwell. He paused to shift through several forms and turned their various senses towards where Kate had pointed before reverting to human. Crouching, he urged them to follow his lead before speaking in a whisper. "You're right, it's out there, in the house behind this one. I'm going to try to lead it away. Give me about a minute and then take off in the other direction. Medley, try to find the other Titans. I can't get them on the communicator, so they're probably in town dealing with something. Stay together."

Kate nodded before a thought crossed her mind. "What if it doesn't want you?"

Beast Boy grinned. "I'm going to make myself pretty hard to ignore," he answered before taking off at a run through the front door and hanging a left around the side of the house.

Lowering her blocks, Kate could feel the whatever-it-was outside moving away after a moment, seemingly following Beast Boy. Standing quickly, she and Kitten dashed to the door and did as he'd asked, taking another route that would lead into the city. Since Kate didn't know her way around, she let Kitten guide them. After several blocks, Kitten had to slow to catch her breath. Her exertions of earlier were begging to wear on her, and her ribs felt as though they were trying to puncture her lungs. "Don't you have any powers?" she asked of Kate, dragging in another lungful of air at the cost of more pain.

"Yes, but I don't know how useful they'd be. I'm sort of new to this."

Kitten blinked before placing a hand over her eyes and groaning. "We're so dead."

Kate's eyes narrowed. "What makes you so sure? It's not like I'm completely defenseless, you know."

"Please. You're just some dumb rookie looking to make a name for yourself. How'd you get on the team, get the source of your powers from a cereal box? Or are you even one of them?"

Though half the reference was lost on Kate, the feeling behind it wasn't. "That's none of your business. What is your problem? I haven't done or said anything to offend you, have I?"

Kitten stood, stepping nose-to-nose with Kate. "Your presence offends me. I don't know why he left you with me. You would have made a better decoy anyway. You'd have at least provided some entertainment if it had caught you," she smirked. It felt good to have someone to blame for this situation, even if it was one of the people that were supposed to be helping her make everything right in her life again. They would bring her daddy back and she could get back to her life... In the meantime though, this one was expendable.

That last comment took Kate off guard. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked warily, sure she wouldn't like the answer. Kitten was really starting to get on her nerves. It didn't help matters any that the feeling from the basement stairs was back and eroding her mental defenses, gnawing at them like a swarm of locusts...

"What are you, dense or something?" Kitten asked before trailing off as Kate's eyes widened. A split second later, Kitten felt a sense of movement and heard a sharp crack before they set down again. In an instant, the girl she'd been arguing with had grabbed her and thrown the two of them a quarter block down the street somehow. In the back of her mind, Kitten wondered if she should feel guilty about her previous statements.

...The feeling of chaos had intensified almost to the point of being unbearable before Kate realized what it meant. Reacting on instinct, she dove for Kitten and threw figurative throttle on her power all the way to the stops, hurling them down the street just as a blurred form crashed down where they had been arguing and cracked the concrete sidewalk. As Kate—no, Medley now—set them down, she turned back to confront their assailant. It stood from where it had impacted the sidewalk, rising to a height of nearly eleven feet. Parts of it were pitch as night, others gray as fog, and others red like blood. Some places, Medley noted, were not merely blood coloration, but that fluid of life itself. Idly, she wondered why that dripping from the creature didn't harden and flake off in the light.

The wind carried with it a rasp from the creature's maw—a word she had heard before, just recently. "Chaaaaarrraxeeeesss..." It had a name, apparently.

So, this was to be it, the first real battle of Kate as Medley? Medley's sword flashed into existence as she took up a guarded stance, her face losing that childish look it usually carried. "Go!" Medley yelled to Kitten as the beast charged forward and she rushed to meet it. In a flash she was there, lashing out and... overbalancing as her sword swung through empty air. It had evaded, its target not the sword-wielding almost-a-threat, but the one trying to get away. Not really conscious of the action, Medley drew on her gravitational power again, righting herself and taking off after Charaxes at a speed she hadn't thought possible as adrenaline flooded her system.

Charaxes was fast, but fueled by desperation and a little of something else, Medley quickly gained on it, just as it reached Kitten. Something blurred out from behind Charaxes and struck Kitten at the same time as the monster turned on its heel, something lifting from its back and dipping forward to intercept the gleaming helix-blade before it could do any damage. Blade met winged carapace and cut in, though the force of the blow was diverted, rendering the strike ineffectual.

It swung, one of its four limbs flashing out blade-like to rend the girl in twain, only to meet open air as Medley pulled a slightly-less-crude flip over the appendage—tipped with a long, narrow pincer that would bring to mind a scorpion, or a preying mantis (more of a cross between the two, actually), had Kate known what those were—to land on its other side. A glance confirmed that Kitten had fallen and was not moving. From the look of it, she wasn't even breathing... Shutting out the sight, Medley fought on, if you could call it that.

She darted in close, swinging once and missing, reversing the swing and bringing it back around for a glancing blow off one of its limbs, finally ending in a thrust at its abdomen that it dodged aside easily. Frustrated, she called on the other power hiding within her, crests flaring to life for a brief second, and time slowed... Probability, possibility, chance itself danced around her senses. She could see what would happen one, five, fifty moves from now, and it all ended the same way. She would fall dead to the street, a bloody wound marking her back. Digging deeper into her meager reserves, she tried to find an outcome that wouldn't end that way... and then she realized something. Something that had been tugging at her subconscious before brought itself to the fore of her mind now. Kitten stumbling past the establishment where she and Beast Boy just happened to be getting food, even as far back as getting up a certain way this morning—none of it was chance, none of it probability. Back further, to a girl stumbling out of an alleyway into the middle of a battle, further still to that same girl stopping for just a moment as a solitary vehicle passed by on a lonely stretch of highway, further still to the girl jolting to sudden life in a hospital morgue... None of it was chance or luck. She was that girl. There were no coincidences, everything up to this point had happened for a _reason_. And now, she would die again.

The shock of that realization drew Medley out of her power and she jabbed forward, hoping against all odds that what she had seen was wrong... before something hit her behind and beneath her right armpit, stabbing deep and pulling out quickly, though thankfully not puncturing her lung. Pain, hot and searing shot outward from the wound, but she ignored it. After all, Etrigan had smashed her elbow to a bloody pulp and she'd surprised him by staying conscious after, this should be nothing!

Medley took a step towards Charaxes and her vision blurred, another step, she couldn't feel her arm, another step, she wanted to draw back the sword and ram it through this thing's ugly face but her limbs just wouldn't obey... Kate fell, eyes unfocused somewhere in the middle distance and breathing shallow. She couldn't move, couldn't talk, and was barely aware of the world around her. A nearby flash and the comforting warmth of her bracelets—muffled but not muted by whatever coursed through her veins—told her the sword was gone. She was defenseless. There would be no stepping out a door and shedding her wounds, the Titans would not fly in to the rescue—of this she was certain—and there would be no coming back this time.

So it was with quite a bit of surprise that she found herself being lifted and coated with something warm and sticky, binding her arms to her sides and her legs together, though she wasn't able to move those at the moment anyway. Another form swung by her shrinking field of vision—Kitten, similarly swathed in that white substance. Perhaps it was a bit of leftover borrowed power, or maybe just gut certainty, but Kate knew beyond a doubt as the blackness overtook her that she was about to lose her hold on a critical piece of information. She could feel it fading already...

* * *

A communicator chirped out its special ring tone for several seconds before it was answered. On the screen, the masked face of Robin stared back. "Beast Boy, we got your message. We would have responded sooner, but there was a problem downtown."

"That's what I thought," Beast Boy acknowledged, not looking at the communicator screen. "Can you get the team down here?"

"What happened?"

This time, Beast Boy pulled his eyes away from what had been holding their attention—a few strands of what looked like spider webbing and a stray piece of clothing. "It took Medley and Kitten."

"What did?" Robin asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion that it was related to what the rest of the Titans had just been dealing with.

"I'm not sure yet," Beast Boy answered, kneeling to pick up the fallen jacket—Kate's jacket, which had a hole that looked like it had come from a 9mm round below and behind the armpit and was surrounded by what could only be crystallized blood, which started to flake off as soon as he touched it. "I'll fill you in when you get here."

Robin shut off the communicator and replaced it in his utility belt. Turning, he regarded the other Titans, who were in various states of disarray. Wordlessly, they left the scene of their latest battle, following the signal from Beast Boy's communicator into another section of town.

Once the Titans were out of sight though, something stirred. Not just one something, but a thousand somethings. Insects of all types crawled out from every hiding place conceivable until they covered the street, where they quickly began to devour the corpses their dead fellows. Then, as one, with the droning hum of countless wings they took to the sky. Something was calling them again, and their simple minds responded the only way they knew how: obedience.

* * *

A short time later, the Titans stood at the scene of the battle, if it could be called a battle, and surveyed the damage. "What did this?" Raven asked, kneeling to hold her hand over a crater in the concrete somewhere in the vicinity of a foot and a half in diameter and a third of that in depth. This hadn't been caused by energy or magic but by brute force, and something told her that it hadn't been even a tenth of what whatever did this was capable of.

A green timber wolf reshaped itself into Beast Boy and he exhaled a moment before answering. "Charaxes," he said simply, not really knowing where to start. Something was still nagging at him, as though he _knew_ something but didn't quite know that he knew it yet.

"Can you track it?" asked Savior. If Beast Boy was right, and Savior had no doubt that he was, then they couldn't waste time standing around figuring out what to do.

"Yeah, but someone should go back to Titan Tower and take a look at the stuff I pulled off of Walker's computer."

Apparently thinking along the same lines as Savior, Robin looked to Raven expectantly. "Rae, can you?"

Furrowing her brow slightly, Raven concentrated on the scene, shutting out the noise caused by her team mates. "Yes. It's in such a state of mental chaos that it leaves a fairly distinctive impression wherever it goes."

"All right, Raven—_find_ this thing. BB, Cy: I want the two of you to go back to the tower and try to find out just what it is we're dealing with. Terra, Star, Savior, and Scalpel: follow Raven from above. Maintain visual contact, but try to stay out of sight. If we catch up to it, I want some element of surprise. Gauntlet, you and I will follow from ground level. Everyone got that?" Getting an affirmative all around, Robin pulled out his communicator and punched in a short code before replacing it. "Keep your communicators on at all times. Titans, go!"

The Titans split up to their assigned tasks, seven headed deeper into the city following Raven's senses and two piling into the T-Car and driving back to the Tower. Along the way, Beast Boy began his recount of the events leading up to the present...

* * *

"I'm going to make myself pretty hard to ignore," he answered, taking off out of the house at a run and hanging a sharp left, circling around the building quickly and running almost directly under where he thought whatever it was that was stalking them had crouched down to wait. He got a response faster than he'd expected as it burst out the side of an adjacent home. He tried not to think about what had drawn it there...

True to his name, Beast Boy shifted forms as soon as it made its presence known, dropping down to all fours and taking off as a tiger—though not as fast as a cheetah, it could go for a greater distance, and that was exactly what he needed to give Medley and Kitten at the moment. Surprisingly though, after only a few dozen meters, it had come dangerously close to catching up. A second later, Beast Boy heard the sound of its feet hitting the ground stop and without pausing to check, he jerked hard to his right, barely avoiding the creature as it landed in the space he had been occupying and continued its run without slowing down. It was faster than he'd given it credit for, and this was not good. He changed again, this time to a velociraptor, hugging the ground and weaving in between as many obstacles as he could find.

The thing chasing him never slowed. Trees, street lights, fences—it tore through them all in its pursuit of the changeling. With a high leap over a brick wall dividing an alleyway, Beast Boy was surprised when it followed, only to pass over him in midair and land several paces ahead, forcing him to stop. It turned around and he got his first good look at it. It towered over him at nearly eleven feet at its head—twelve to twelve and a half if one counted the pair of antennae-ish things protruding from it. It was a deep black, broken by patterns of grey, red, and even a few harder to see yellows and deep greens. Its exoskeleton—for it had no skin—shimmered in what light penetrated the alley, giving it a look almost like spilled oil in the sun. It had four arms, the lower two of which were tipped in pincers that looked like a cross between a preying mantis and a scorpion while the upper two were vaguely human, though sharply clawed. Both its legs and arms were covered in short spines, down-and-back swept, though several of those spines reversed and elongated towards its wrists, and two to each arm had lengthened near its elbows to nearly a foot and a half. Its head was perhaps its most gruesome feature: starting at the bottom, it sported two sets of mandibles—one shorter inner set and a much longer outer set. It lacked a protruding nose; instead it had only twin slits set in-between a pair of disturbingly human eyes. Above its human eyes, it had two large compound eyes, both of which were a deep shimmering green reminiscent of a dragon fly which stood out from its mostly-triangular head and seemed to be able to rotate independently of each other in greater than 360 degrees. Its head was topped by a large pair of something akin to antennae, what one would see on some species of moth—they were almost leaf-shaped in their appearance and colored black like the rest of it, though fading to grey from the middle to the tips. To complete the image of a monster that it exuded, it gave a raspy hiss and drooled—the salivate falling to the pavement where it hissed and began to smoke. Apparently, it was highly acidic.

After what seemed an eternity, though was in reality only somewhere close to six seconds (just about one round in D&D, enough for Gar to get a good spot check... ahem Sorry, I'll be good), its mouth opened fully and it roared its challenge. "ChaaAAARRRAAAXEEesss!" It charged, dashing forward and attempting to spear Beast Boy with both of its forward pincers. Instinctively, Beast Boy found himself shrinking to a much smaller form, that of a ferret as he jumped between its legs to its other side. There he again changed, this time into an African elephant, and swung his tusks up to catch Charaxes about the midsection (thorax?) and hurl it into the wall of the alley.

Finding the tight quarters a little too confining for that form, he changed again into a triceratops. That was probably what saved him as Charaxes regained its footing before revealing a part of itself that had remained hidden up until now. From underneath and below its wings, something streaked out almost faster than Beast Boy could track, landing him a glancing blow to one of his horns. He didn't know how he knew, but instinct told him that its tail was tipped with something nasty that probably wouldn't be good to get stuck with. Once more he changed forms, this time into a rhinoceros, something whose hide he doubted even this freak of nature's sting could penetrate. It tried again—once, twice, and a third time, each attempt rebuffed by Beast Boy's tough skin.

With a growl, it gave up that attempt in favor of something else as it rushed forward and took hold of the changeling's head in its two humanoid hands. In a show of strength, it lifted the green rhinoceros with almost no visible effort before smashing him back into the pavement. Another lift brought the Titan over Charaxes's head before the creature let go, flinging Beast Boy through the air. Midair, Beast Boy changed forms again, this time into an eagle... but luck wasn't with him as momentum carried him into a wall which he struck and rebounded from with bone-cracking force. He fell, landing behind a dumpster just as Charaxes vaulted over to the other side. After a few moments of turning its head this way and that, the beast gave up on finding the green Titan, assuming that he had simply gotten away before taking off itself. Spreading its wing carapaces, it extended its flight wings—thin, almost delicate things compared to the thick, leathery shells covering them—and took to the sky with a droning hum. It could smell prey, prey the green one had led it away from. They would not escape...

* * *

"So it knocked you out and took off?" Cyborg asked as they neared the end of the road. Ahead, a bridge connecting Titan's Tower to the mainland rose up out of the water just as the T-Car neared, allowing them to drive onto the island and down into the garage.

"Well, no. But it cracked my head against that wall pretty hard," Gar mumbled, rubbing a rather large, throbbing bump on the back of his head. He was torn between admitting that it _had_ actually sent him into unconsciousness for a minute and sparing himself the embarrassment and telling his team mates that it had merely knocked him senseless. He chose the second one.

A voice from the Titan-communicators built into Cyborg and affixed to Beast Boy's belt challenged that assertion. "It knocked Beast Boy _more_ senseless?" Terra teased.

Gar's blush pretty much answered that question. "HEY, aren't you supposed to be on MY side!" he shouted indignantly, pulling the communicator off his belt and glaring at it, though he wasn't rewarded with Terra's face, as none of the Titans save for him were actually looking into the cameras affixed above the devices' display. Cycling through the displays from communicators rewarded him with varying views of the city—including an awe-inspiring view of Jump from the air, courtesy of Starfire (though he'd seen it countless times before, it was always amazing to look at). Giving up, he replaced the device as he and Victor made their way to the nearest computer, which just happened to be in the garage. Nearly all of the computer systems in Titan Tower were connected to one another and the one in the garage was an especially robust system, seeing as it was the one Victor used to design, build, test, and run diagnostics for all of the Titans' vehicles and a good number of other gadgets—it was probably only rivaled by the one in his personal lab and Robin's terminal for contacting Oracle.

"Ok, we're ready to start," Victor announced, taking Gar's communicator and transferring the data collected from Drury Walker's computer onto his own, along with the test-tube sample which was placed into a device for spectral analysis. After a few moments of sifting through and reorganizing data, he directed Gar to sit at screen beside his own. "BB, I'm giving this stuff to you. It's all genetics—DNA models and specs I don't recognize. See if you can make heads or tails of it. There's some fragmented data in what looks like his recent security logs. I'm going to try to recover that while I look over the technical aspects of this crap. This could take a while..." Victor directed, murmuring the last part as he connected directly to the computer and began processing data faster than nearly any human could handle.

Beside Victor, Gar sifted through the data he'd been given and started looking everything over. "How's the search going?" he asked absently. Most of the DNA models were of insects—several hundred species. Each file contained a DNA sequence taken from a member of that species along with notes detailing where that sequence would go later into a master sequence.

Raven's voice came from the terminal—Victor had switched them over to it as well—in answer to his question. "More slowly than I thought it would. There is a good deal of mental clutter to sift through. There are two other impressions along with that from Charaxes—I take it one of these belongs to Kitten. The other _feels_ like Medley, but it's not as strong as it should be, unless she was deeply unconscious at the time. It would be almost easier to follow hers, if it weren't this weak. Also, it jumps around a lot, as though this Charaxes thing knew we would be following it and made the trail intentionally harder to follow."

"It looks like it's leading us towards the warehouse district," Savior added.

Scalpel's next comment gave Gar pause for thought. "At least that part of town is less crowded. There will be less people there to stumble across it."

Deciding to keep his gut feeling to himself that something about that statement didn't seem to fit a certain pattern he couldn't quite put his finger on at the moment, he asked the question that had been on his mind since first finding Kitten. "So, what was it that brought you guys into town—bank robbery, jail break, a riot over tickets to the new release of (insert latest Marvel based movie here and add one to whatever number is at the end of it)?"

It was Starfire who answered first as the Titans who had been there took turns telling the tale. "It began with a call from the local authorities..."

* * *

Starfire, pausing in her flight path to hang in midair, answered the call to their communicators. "Yes?"

A Sound-Only display met her eyes as a dispatcher for the police relayed her message. "Oh please lend us your assistance, brave heroes of our fair city! Though our often ineffectual police force has tried to contain the situation, a large swarm of insects is devouring everything in sight! We urgently request that you take over our fight against this menace, though we will not thank you later and the media will surely find a way to slander your names while you protect them as they watch from the sidelines and get in the way."

Robin, who had also been listening in answered for Starfire. "Why certainly, miss. We will rise up and defend you from this heinous threat!" he declared, his handsomely chiseled face setting in steely determination and his cape flapping dashingly in the wind...

* * *

"Wait, wait. Hold on a minute," Robin cut in, interrupting Starfire's retelling of the story before one of the Titans burst a gut. "You'd better let me tell it Star. The dispatcher did not sound like a cheesy Speed Racer reject and my cape _did not_ 'flap dashingly in the wind.' I told her we would be on the scene as fast as possible then called in to Titan Tower for backup. I had a feeling it was going to take more than the three of us to take care of whatever we were walking into..."

* * *

Three of the Titans arrived at the scene of the incident. Around them, chaos reigned. A number of people were running around, madly flailing their arms and screaming. Of course, this was a perfectly understandable reaction since the majority of them were covered from head to toe in stinging, biting, and crawling insects of all types. The air was thick with clouds of bugs swarming the street while several fire trucks attempted to spray them into submission. Police wielding shotguns and grenade launchers filled with gas grenades fired almost wildly into the air from the relative safety of their vehicles.

Taking stock of the situation quickly, Robin began giving orders. "Star, swing in and try to knock out as many of those clouds as you can. Scalpel, start directing people closer to those fire trucks. I'm going to see about getting the firefighters to use their spray to give those people some relief. I'll meet back up with you in a few." That said, he took off at a run towards the fire marshal, who stood atop one of his ladder trucks, manning one of the spray nozzles himself.

Starfire rose into the air, gaining altitude until she was level with about the middle of what looked to be the main body of the swarm. She knew they would scatter as soon as she started firing, but it couldn't be helped. She could only try to maximize the damage she could inflict while they were clustered. Her eyes and hands lit up as she charged a pair of starbolts before hurling them into the swarm. Waiting until the bolts were deep into the cloud, she willed them to detonate, consuming who-knew-how-many insects in their heat. She followed up by firing beams from her eyes, trying to sweep through the still-clustered swarm without punching straight through and hitting a building or bystanders. Unfortunately, they had realized that something was attacking them and countered it the only way they knew how: by massing around the alien in an attempt to bring down the threat before it could remove more of their numbers.

Below, Scalpel was having much less luck convincing screaming panicky people to stop running around in circles or rolling on the ground long enough to move closer to the water pumping vehicles Robin had pointed out. After several frustrated attempts to get their attention, he gave up and grabbed the nearest one around the collar, pulling the instinctively terror-stricken individual over to where Robin had informed the fire marshal of his plan. Together, two of his men cut back the pressure on their streams enough that they wouldn't injure anyone, but would still do the job of knocking the bugs clinging to their clothes off. Once the man Scalpel had dragged into the flow stopped screaming like a little girl, several of the on-looking police officers got the idea and started to assist the oddly-clad alien. That is, until a yell and a burst of green light drew their attention skyward.

Starfire shrieked as a living tidal wave of black swept around her, closing in on all sides and cutting off her escape. A moment later, several insects attached themselves to her form and began doing what they did best. What followed was a jerky pattern composed of attempts to scratch, swat, and/or claw the maddening creatures off of her. The feeling of bugs on and in her ears, nose, and lips was too much for the girl and she reacted instinctively. Loosing a furious scream, she curled in on herself most of the way before thrusting back outward, sending with the motion a massive burst of energy that cleared the sky around her. Huffing slightly, she idly wiped bug guts off of one arm while casting a glare towards the remaining swarm. "I am beginning to very much _dislike_ these Earth insects," she muttered before flying in again to strafe the cloud with small starbolts.

A birdarang hurled into the fray announced Robin's joining the battle. It exploded in their midst, scattering dead bugs everywhere. Several explosions of fire and light reverberated through the swarm, further scattering them. But just as it seemed that the unruly pests were on the verge of dissipating, a droning that seemed to come from everywhere at once announced the arrival of reinforcements... for the wrong side. Countless more bugs, a hundred times as many as had been gathered above the street filled the sky so full as to blot out the sun. It grew dim and Robin knew with certainty that a few explosive discs and starbolts weren't going to put this colony down. It seemed as though every last bug in the state (and they were in Florida, where there are Everglades and swamps full of mosquitoes nearly big enough to drag off a grown man) had decided to gather at this one point in Jump City. From the rooftops, several pigeons that had been using anything they could for shelter suddenly took flight. The swarm above moved, swallowing the birds whole. Individual bones fell from the mass of writhing insects—feathers, flesh and blood stripped from them in less than a second. As one, the massive clouds of bodies dove into the street, seeking warm flesh and blood to sink their little teeth into. They were hungry.

* * *

Author's Notes: Thanks go out once more to LegendMaker for giving me the idea for this arc (and for beta reading, and for putting up with crappy ideas... and it's more like I begged for something to write since at the time all I had were the first couple of chapters and a nice ending, but nothing for the creamy center everyone loves and she tossed me Charaxes). I think I've got the scene division thingie fixed now, but the formatting still looks terrible. I changed the arc-title to "Causality" because "Growing Up," didn't sound like what I was looking for. Well actually, it sounded cheesier or something I think. Expect the next two installations of Causality, "Consequences" and "Accountability" some time after the vacation gap. Sorry for the slow progress. When I asked for more hours at work I didn't think they'd pay attention and pretty much have me working nearly every night. It's murder on my writing routine. Oh well, can't be helped. Expect a fairly large lapse in chapters (yes, larger than usual) between mid-May through about mid-July. Going on vacation with my girlfriend. Heh. Of course, knowing me I'll wind up packing my notebook and getting work done on random stuff anyway. And yes, I mean 'notebook' as in one of those binders of paper held in place by metal rings and not a laptop. On a personal note, my aunt was recently in a car crash way on the other end of the state. She's in a neck brace at the moment... besides a really bad case of whiplash, her head hit the steering wheel (older model car with no airbags, and yes, she was wearing a seatbelt) and knocked out a few of her bottom teeth. I don't remember what exactly they said it did to her jaw, but she'll be having liquid meals for a while. Perhaps the most ironic thing about this is that she (Shelia) was visiting HER aunt (Ruby, I guess that would make her my great aunt) _at the hospital_ and had her wreck all of fifteen minutes away from it. Right front tire blew out and the car wrapped itself around a light pole. Fun stuff. Annoyingly enough, the police ticketed her for "failure to maintain control." 


	6. Causality: Consequences

**Gods' Playground**

06 – Causality: Consequences

Perhaps it was a particularly loud crack that drew her out of her drug-induced haze, or that wet gurgle overlain with a sort of slurping... but really, it was the small splash of something warm, wet, and coppery smelling to her face that brought Kitten around. Her eyes opened to darkness and she tried in vain to turn her head to locate the source of the sounds and the splatter, but her head was held fast. In fact, now that she had regained feeling to most of her body, she could tell that she was bound from head to toe—mummified, almost. Most of the sounds continued, though the gurgle had stopped and somehow, some part of her knew that was a bad sign.

After an eternity, though in reality only a few minutes, Kitten's eyes began to adjust to the low lighting and she was able to take in her surroundings. In her peripheral vision, she could make out someone bound on either side of her, and they all seemed to be strung up fairly high from what she assumed to be ground level, as her feet weren't actually touching it. Off to one side, she heard something hit the ground with a sort of thunk/wet smack and the person strung up to her immediate left groaned, apparently coming around as well.

There was movement in the mostly-darkness as a dark, hulking shape loomed up in her peripheral vision. She felt a slight vibration travel through whatever covered her as whoever was bound next to her was pulled forcibly out of his or her bindings. More movement and that dark shape was now below her, almost directly in front of her. Another groan, this time from the ground where the other captive had been moved, preceded a sound Kitten couldn't identify, followed immediately by a sound she was shortly to become intimately familiar with: the sound of a man screaming out in pain in fear as whatever lurked in the darkness devoured him. Kitten screamed—her own lost in the echoes of the dying man's. A flash of bioluminescence from the ground abruptly cut off her wails as her eyes adjusted and focused... and she suddenly wished with all her being for the darkness to return. There, just a few yards away, a bundle of white and red that could only have been a person was held aloft by the looming form of Charaxes, his body awash in light reminiscent of a firefly or lightening bug. Blood spread further down the mass of white as Charaxes fed, his face pressed tight against the bundle and one pair of arms slowly working to crush the now silent man into freshly pulped humanly goodness. After a moment, Charaxes paused in his feeding and pulled his head away from his victim to regard Kitten. Kitten's eyes rolled into the back of her head as she fainted at the sight of gore on the creature's visage nearly the same moment that Charaxes' bioluminescence died off, returning her to welcome darkness.

* * *

Meanwhile, In the Past...

Right at this moment, a part of Robin's subconscious not devoted to battle, not worrying over just deep the crap they had found themselves in was, and not wondering where in the _flying blue HELL_ all the bugs were coming from was desperately wishing for something along the lines of a giant can of RAID. Most of those thoughts were driven completely from his mind as the sky-obscuring swarm overhead made its descent. He knew he wasn't equipped to handle such foes at the moment, but that didn't stop him from drawing his bo up and taking a loose fighting stance. They were almost on top of him when his vision went black. Not the black of unconsciousness, but that of a familiar power surrounding his body in a protective bubble. "Oh thank you God," he breathed, knowing that if Raven was here then the rest of the Titans weren't far behind her.

The sound of Cyborg's Sonic Cannon firing into the swarm and ground shaking under his feet confirmed Robin's hopes as his bubble was lifted into the air and pulled swiftly to where the majority of the Titans had regrouped in a semi-circle around what remained of the civilians and police force. Gauntlet and Raven were holding the mass of insects at bay while anyone that could fired or flung things into their midst. Once past their barrier, Raven's power dissolved from around him and Robin accepted a bundle handed to him by Savior. "Thought you might need these," said the white-garbed teen.

Robin quickly re-supplied his utility belt and took stock of the situation. "Beast Boy and Medley?"

Raven answered. "Across town"

"We thought it would be wise not to involve the rookie yet," Cyborg called from where he stood firing into the mass.

"All right. Anyone got a plan for taking out a massive swarm of tiny bugs?" He asked, looking around the group. Getting a resounding negative, he nodded. "Rae and Gauntlet, stick close to the non-combatants but feel free to give support when it looks like it's needed. You know the drill by now people. And try not to get too separated; I don't want anyone getting stung to death or something."

With a little effort, Raven extended her powers in an outward push, driving the swarm away from the small crowd and giving her teammates the opening they needed to start tearing through their enemy. Ahead of Raven, the Titans rushed out and opened fire. Summoning her power, Terra ripped into the street and pulled out several large chunks of asphalt and began using them as improvised fly swatters. Robin dug into his re-equipped utility belt and hurled whatever he found there that could put a dent in the swarm's ranks while beside him, Starfire hurled small starbolts. Having her friends join them seemed to have given her a bit of a boost, but she was cut off from the sun at the moment and already starting to feel fatigue creeping up and she wasn't about to risk flying through the swarm's body for a quick recharge.

Savior and Scalpel were covering Cyborg who was still firing into the swarm. Savior was using the Shimmer to swat large sections of the bugs out of the air while simultaneously wrapping it around any that gathered closely enough and constricting it, leaving large balls of bug parts lying around. Scalpel was stuck swatting at anything that got close with the flat of his glaive, seeing as he and Robin were predominantly hand-to-hand fighters and weren't especially suited to this kind of combat. Seeing that their team mates had most of the swarm's attention now, Gauntlet used his namesake's power to form a giant flyswatter and brought it down repeatedly amidst the swarm, while Raven partially mimicked her boyfriend's attempts and used her powers to capture and crush, flatten, or grab things and smash anything that wasn't human... or Tamaranian, or Blacktrinian.

"Does anyone else think this just screams 'Killer Moth is responsible?'" Robin called a while later, once again running low on munitions.

Beside him, Starfire answered—she was probably the only person that could hear him over the droning hum of their foes anyway. "It does, but then why are there none of his engineered creatures here?"

That question would have to wait until later to be answered as Robin pulled out the last of his explosives and glanced around, looking for anything that could be of use. His eyes landed on the Fire Department's pump truck and an idea struck him. After telling Star, he dashed back to where Raven was still trying to flatten random clusters of insects. "Rae! Think you can rip the gas tank out from under that thing and spread its contents midair?" Robin asked quickly.

Shrugging, Raven directed her powers to pull the truck's gas tank out without igniting its contents accidentally. "You do realize that napalming our friends would be a bad thing, right?"

"I'm hoping it'll all burn before it reaches the ground," Robin agreed sheepishly. It was one of the _dumbest_ plans he'd come up with to date, something that he would have expected to hear from Rob, but it was the only thing they had to go with. "Do it," he said, arming his last three explosive discs and timing his throw. "TITANS DOWN!" he yelled as soon as Raven's power released the tank and hurled his explosives.

The results were more than Tim had hoped for. Raven had released the gasoline high enough that it had spread to encompass a vast majority of the street. The moment his explosives detonated it created a small fuel-air bomb which, in addition to blowing out all the windows on the block, took out most of the swarm and disorganized the rest. The only downside was that now he, his team mates, and the crowd were being pelted with flaming debris. But they could handle flaming debris much more easily than they could handle a million hungry little mouths seeking warm flesh. Above and around them, the swarm suddenly thinned and eventually dissipated altogether.

"That was anticlimactic," Rob commented as the Titans regrouped and began assisting the police with finalizing the evacuation of the block. It was an effort too late, but in any case they doubted the buildings would be habitable for a while. At least until someone called the Orchin Man.

Looking up from his arm-display, Cy caught Robin's attention. "Hey Fearless, looks like BB and New Girl ran into trouble. He lest a message for us."

Robin nodded, pulling out his T-com and dialing the code to connect his with Beast Boy's. It picked up after a few rings and the green changeling spared the screen a glance to see who it was before turning back to look off-screen. "Beast Boy, we got your message. We would have responded sooner, but there was a problem downtown."

"That's what I thought," he acknowledged as the camera on his screen panned wildly about for a moment and resolved again. Apparently, he had knelt down to look at something. "Can you get the team down here?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"What happened?" Robin asked, willing Beast Boy to turn the camera so that he could observe the scene for himself but getting no such luck.

"It took Medley and Kitten."

"What did?" Robin asked. '_Kitten?_ Not her again,' he thought randomly, but then the connection was made. 'Countless bugs swarm downtown Jump City and Kitten just happens to run into Gar and Kate?'

"I'm not sure yet. I'll fill you in when you get here."

* * *

"And that's pretty much it," Victor concluded, having gotten to the end of the Titans' little round-robin (no pun intended) retelling of everything that had happened.

"So that's why everyone was covered in bug guts," Gar commented. A mass groan came from the speakers as the majority of the team voiced their opinions about the mess simultaneously. "How's the manhunt going?"

Off-screen, Savior answered. "We're closing in on the dock area. It is possible that it could have set up shop there. The area is secluded and besides dock workers, people tend to avoid it. It's cliché, but I don't think it will care about that."

"It's just a giant freaking bug; it can't be all that smart. This is probably the best it can come up with," Terra added.

Beast Boy frowned—something didn't feel right about that assessment, but he didn't want to cause undue worry. Beside him, Cy whooped in triumph as he finished decrypting and debugging Drury Walker's security logs and started scanning through them. "Let's see what Drury was up to."

Gar went back to looking through DNA models and species names the computer tagged them with. One name in particular drew his attention. Having spent time in various environments with his parents, he was brought up aware of what to look out for when trekking through unknown terrain. "This is a spider only native to South America... its venom causes moderately long-term paralysis, typically less than a day but sometimes up to three, depending on the amount of venom injected. Bad stuff," he muttered, going to the next model while mentally reviewing everything he'd seen of Charaxes. Many of the things here were present in that abomination. Perhaps the stinger-tail that it had tried to hit him with had contained this spider's venom...

* * *

The Titans made their way deeper into the dock area before finally stopping at what looked like an empty storage building, once used to house machinery. After getting into Ambush Position as it were, they charged in and confronted a room full of...nothing. The building was completely empty. Savior's quietly muttered "well shit," pretty much summed up how they all felt.

"Rae?" Robin asked, turning to the goth.

"Don't look at me. The trail stops here."

Acknowledging that it wasn't any fault on Raven's part, Robin nodded and led them from the building. "This was a bust. We're heading back to the tower. Got anything on your end guys?"

Cyborg's reply was quick in coming. "Yeah. I think you should see this."

Not very much later (they had actually been fairly close to Titan Tower, having come nearly full circle through the city) the group was seated in the Tower's main conference room. Victor was at the end of the table closest to a large protection screen and was waiting for things to settle down before showing them what he had found. It took a few minutes, but once everyone was settled, he cut out the lights and pressed a few buttons recessed into the table that controlled the projection system. "These are Drury Walker's security logs sixteen hours prior to Gar and Kate meeting up with Kitten. I'll let you watch the original version first," he said, pressing play.

On-screen, Drury Walker sat at one of his computer terminals, poring over several screens of data and muttering to himself. Occasionally, the camera's build in microphones would pick up snatches of what he said, a few of which stood out more than others. "Ungrateful child," "complete failure," and "wish I could do more..." were just a few of them. Suddenly, the footage blinked before resolving through snow back to its view of the lab. Drury was still alone and hunched over his terminal. The screen was covered in static again for a moment, and then Drury looked up towards the stairs. Nothing was there, but he addressed the empty air as though someone was.

"Who are you? What do you want?" he asked, panic starting to creep into his voice.

The footage was shot through with more static this time, heavier and louder before resolving. At the other end of the table, Raven's eyes narrowed in what looked to be working quickly towards fury.

"What kind of bargain?"

More static, though not as thick as before.

"Why would you?"

Still more static flashed across the screen before clearing.

"And what do you ask in return for this?"

The screen went blank before blinking back in.

"My what? That's ridiculous."

More static.

"Wait!" Drury paused, glancing up towards the ceiling. His lips moved slightly and he turned back towards that empty space. "I'll do it."

The screen went to static, then black, then back to normal. Drury turned away from the stairs and back to his terminal where he began typing furiously.

Victor stopped the playback. "I couldn't figure out what was going on with the video. It shouldn't have been cutting out as much as it did and there was something about the way it cut out in response to anything Walker said that made me think that I was missing something. So I ran it through a dozen and a half filters and came back with this. Enjoy," he said, loading another video file. It looked almost exactly the same as the first video, except the screen had an odd tint to it.

The footage blinked, resolving through snow to show...that Drury Walker was not alone in his basement laboratory. An ordinary looking man dressed in a business suit had materialized just shy of the basement stairs. He spoke and the screen flickered. "I know what you seek."

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Neron," he answered, and it was though a hundred voiced had cried out his name at once—in pain, torment, agony, pleasure, fury... "I wish to make a bargain. A pact, if you will." His voice held a certain amount of irony and contempt, though no one seated at the table could guess at what.

"What kind of bargain?"

"You crave power, as do I. I can give you what you seek."

"Why would you?"

Neron grinned. "I have use for one such as you in my ranks."

"And what do you ask in return for this?"

Neron's answer was accompanied by those of countless more in undertone. "Your soul."

"What? That's ridiculous."

Neron frowned in disappointment and turned halfway towards the stairs. "You are disinterested? I will leave you to your humiliation then. Perhaps another would appreciate my gifts more."

"Wait! ...I'll do it."

"Then Drury Walker, I grant you the gift of knowledge and show you the path towards putting fear into the hearts of men. You will be Charaxes, devourer of humanity." The screen went to black and Neron was gone.

Victor shut down the security footage and turned to regard the group. "So... any idea as to who or what this guy is?"

"He's Neron, obviously," Rob answered.

"Anyone besides the smartass?" Noel asked, looking to Tim.

Tim shrugged. "I don't know. I could run the name through the system..."

"You don't have to," Raven interrupted. She looked grim. "If Neron is involved, Drury Walker is dead. Everything that made up the man Drury has been consumed by the monster Charaxes."

"You know this guy?" Tara piped up from down the table.

"No. I've heard things, read things... Neron is supposedly an elder demon and broker of souls. He is also known as 'Devourer of Souls.' It is said that he has been around since the dawn of humanity, which isn't really all that long to an immortal being."

Nigel was next to speak up. "What is he doing here then? What would a small-time crook like Walker have to offer?"

"I don't know. He craves souls—I think they fuel his power. But you're right, Drury Walker was just a small-timer. There must have been something else."

"There is," Gar answered, tapping at the keys imbedded in the table before him. The DNA models he had been studying earlier sprung up on screen. "Walker may have been an idiot criminally, but he was a genius in his field. Neron said he gave Drury a gift of knowledge, right? Maybe he was already on to something and all he needed was a push in the right direction. The stuff from his records, the stuff I got from the floor... he made some kind of serum or something that turned him into this thing, with Neron's help. I think these DNA models are snippets from individual insect species that he found useful enough to put into it. And this," here, he brought up a model of the stuff he had found on the floor, "was the delivery mechanism: a retrovirus, not unlike those used for curing freak genetic diseases."

"Wait," Rob interrupted, holding up his hand. "You're saying this Walker guy _sold his soul_ for something he was already about to create anyway, something that would probably strip away all of his humanity thus removing his soul?"

"Pretty much," Tim nodded.

"And you said he was smart!" Rob accused, pointing at Gar.

"I said he was a genius _in his field_. I didn't say he had any common sense whatsoever."

"Anything else you can tell us Gar?" Noel cut in before the discussion could degenerate further.

Gar shrugged, but as he was about to say no, he remembered something from the lab. "Wait, there was something. Kate found a monitor with the initials for Charaxes divided into individual words. Chemical Hybrid something-or-other. It pretty much meant what I said: he found a way to combine DNA from different species of insect and applied their various traits towards making one very large bug-monster and used a retrovirus as the delivery system."

"I sent what we have to Star Labs, they should be getting back to us with more information soon," Victor said, glancing between the screen and Gar. "I'm hoping they can find a way to reverse it."

Starfire, who had been silent up until now, looked towards Victor as though he had the answers for her questions. "Why would someone do this to themselves? What could have possessed Drury Walker to turn himself into a monster at the cost of the things that made him human?"

Victor said nothing, but tapped a few keys and the screen resolved into more security footage, this time from the day before Neron appeared. Drury was sitting at the same terminal, alternating between typing and taking occasional bites from a sub-sandwich and a bag of chips. The camera's microphone picked up the sound of someone stomping down the stairs and Drury winced as the door to the lab was thrown open. Kitten stomped halfway into the lab and stopped.

"What are you doing down here again?" she asked, her voice pitched to project a snotty attitude of pseudo-superiority.

"Working on something, honey. How was your day?"

"Ugh. Why don't you get a real job? You're such a loser. I can't believe you're my father."

Drury turned to regard his daughter. "I am though. Is that what you really think of me?"

"I hate you. You're useless. You're a failure."

"I see."

Kitten made to say something else, but the video feed cut out. Victor shut off the projector. "The security footage was pretty trashed. That's all I managed to salvage, though from comparing the timestamps, I'd say there was more—a lot more."

"So what's the plan?" Nigel asked, looking to Tim's end of the table.

"Gar, the closest thing we've got to an expert on this subject. Any suggestions?"

Gar looked up from the table and shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me."

"Already did," Noel pointed out. "Likely to again, when we find it."

"Hey!"

Raven interrupted before Gar could say anything more. "There has to be something we're missing. It was smart enough to produce a false trail—or its instincts told it to, it doesn't matter either way. Why would it do so, though?"

"The docks were empty. Perhaps he simply ran out of victims?" Nigel suggested.

Tim frowned as the thought of exactly what it would be doing to those victims occurred. "What makes you think he would be attacking people?" he asked, playing devil's advocate for the moment.

"Oh come on!" Rob yelled, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a pamphlet of some kind. "Haven't you realized yet that it's following a pattern set by most non-humanoid man-made creatures in like every horror movie, ever? Not to mention some that have actually been seen and dealt with before. It's already past the 'lose your humanity and become a monster' stage. It should be on 'eat anything that moves' by now. And then, it'll go to 'reproduce/spawn like crazy to take over the city.'"

At this, something in Gar's mind clicked. "Of course! It's a predator looking for prey. It won't go to some deserted part of town where it will stand out. This thing is probably right in the middle of the city, but hidden in such a way that the only people to see it will be..." he trailed off before tapping at the table controls and bringing up a map of the city. Next, he highlighted all of the park areas. "This is where we need to be looking."

"The only problem is that there are over a dozen parks in the city, and they're all fairly large. People won't start filing missing-persons reports for a few days, and by then it will be too late," Tim pointed out, glancing around the table. "Assuming that Rob is right," he added. In front of him, the phone build into the table rang. After looking at the caller I.D. and verifying that it was Star Labs, he put them on speakerphone.

The next few minutes talking with and questioning the people at the labs was helpful, but worrying. They confirmed everything Rob had said, frustratingly enough for some. Charaxes would seek food because the transformation had drained him and his metabolism was something close to triple what it had been, and he would soon start reproducing. They could contain him, but only if the Titans first apprehended him. And they were still looking into reversing Drury Walker's condition. Ending the call, the Titans re-supplied what was needed and headed out, deciding it was best to stick together as they searched through the various parks of Jump City for any sign of what was once a man.

Someone stirred in the dark. Eyelids fluttered open slowly and a young girl looked around drunkenly, her brain trying to cope with too many things at once and failing to process everything. Things swam in and out of her vision, her head felt like someone had taken a hammer and bashed it repeatedly into her skull, and her body desperately attempted to vomit but couldn't quite work out the correct muscular control necessary for the task so she was left feeling sick with nothing to do about it. Other parts of her body slowly began sending damage reports up towards her brain, which told them in no uncertain terms to screw off until it had things straightened out upstairs. And above it all, a sickeningly sweet sensation pervaded her mind, throwing off the rest of her senses in its dominance.

Kate came to some semblance of consciousness what seemed like years after actually opening her eyes. A mixture of terror and revulsion came from someone nearby flooding through her system, and likely had been for some time. There was something else though, that sickly-sweet feeling that over-rode everything else. Though she couldn't see, the feeling was strong enough that she didn't need sight to know what was going on. Someone was in the final throes of death nearby. Light filled her vision suddenly and her eyes, apparently the only voluntary muscles she had control over at the moment, focused on the sight before her.

Charaxes, its body glowing in various places via bio-illumination, was feeding...on a person. After a moment, it tossed aside what was left and moved deeper into the room. Kate's eyes focused on the soon-to-be corpse and her body shuddered in response to feeling the last remaining life leave the monster's latest victim. Her body once again reminded her that it desperately wanted to be sick but couldn't quite figure out how at the moment. Whatever Charaxes had hit her with had caused most of her voluntary muscles to go slack, leaving her immobile. Her head swam and Charaxes came into focus, dragging yet another victim into her line of sight.

Had she the presence of mind, she may have questioned why it was feeding so near to her position, only just slightly to the left of her, as though it _wanted_ someone hanging there to see what it was doing. She may have also questioned how exactly it was that she was even awake in the first place. Unfortunately, she was still doped to the gills and not quite up to forming a coherent train of thought beyond 'I want to puke' and 'I'm going to throw up.' As she watched Charaxes feed on more victims, more than her addled brain cared to count at the moment, another thought popped into her mind—something half-remembered and heavily fogged with whatever was coursing through her veins, but still coherent enough to be remembered later.

'_I must not turn away. All these lives... my responsibility. I had the power to stop it and couldn't act. My fault.'_

* * *

It was dark, coming up eleven pm when the Titans reached the first to the last park in their list to search. Physical exhaustion was catching up to them quickly, but they pushed themselves regardless. Beast Boy and Raven combed the ground level looking for any sign while those who could flew above and those who couldn't simply spread out in search of anything out of the ordinary. After combing the park twice, they were nearly ready to call this one clear when Beast Boy scented something. He reverted back to human form long enough to inform the others before following the scent trail towards a park exit as a blood hound.

"What is it?" Robin asked as BB paused to again return to human form. His answer was grim.

"Blood. Lots of it."

Not waiting for an invitation, Raven extended her senses in the general direction the trail seemed to be going. Following BB's lead again, they left the park and started up a parallel street a short distance before Raven stopped. Ahead, through steel and concrete, she could sense a mind in such turmoil that its thoughts were alien to her, like... like the chorus hum of countless insects. Slightly further than that, through feelings of death, despair, and disgust she found a familiar mind. As soon as her mind touched that other, it leapt at the chance for solace with—if not a friendly mind, then one familiar and less disturbing than the one nearest. Raven gasped as her eyes were suddenly not her own and she was trapped, bound to a pillar below ground, staring down on a man-turned-monster as it subdued and fed on its next victim. She quickly pulled away.

"We have to get in there _now_. It's already too late..."

Understanding, the Titans rushed towards the building—a parking garage scheduled for renovation and cleared of people. Just as they reached the entrances though, Raven felt Charaxes below turn its attention away from its victim and towards them. Somehow it knew they were there. She felt it suddenly rush towards them at what seemed like an impossible speed and opened her mouth to warn her teammates, but it was too late. With a roar, Charaxes burst through a large pile of construction materials—which they would later learn it had left there to disguise its entrance to the lower levels. The Titans scattered and readied themselves for combat.

Charaxes turned his head this way and that, taking in all those that had so eagerly walked into its nest. Two of those present smelled unfamiliar to it, not like anything it had fed on so far. Another held a familiar scent: that of the wild, countless other scents rolled into one. Recognition dawned in its mind: the changeling it had faced earlier was back. Its antennae flicked, apparently tracking the Titans as they slowly shifted into attack positions around it.

"Hey," Gauntlet called to Charaxes, drawing its/his attention. "You do realize you're only a botched Super Soldier Serum away from being The Tick's sidekick, right?" Charaxes responded with a stream of saliva which, assuming it was toxic or acidic otherwise the bug wouldn't be doing it, Gauntlet raised his shield against. The street around the shield immediately began to dissolve once the saliva touched it. "Now that was just plain rude."

The Titans attacked—Robin, Scalpel, and Savior coming in from three sides with weapons drawn (or in Savior's case, formed from Shimmer), while Starfire rose into the air and charged a starbolt in each hand and waited for her opening. The sound of Cyborg's sonic cannon charging was drowned out as Terra pulled up a small asphalt platform and started gathering projectiles. Robin, Savior, and Scalpel met Charaxes at the same time, swinging out and smashing him with whatever was in hand. Robin's bo-staff connected with its head and abdomen, glancing off without any apparent effect. Beside Robin, Scalpel brought his glaive in, but a slight shift from Charaxes caused it to simply glance off its angular exoskeleton instead of digging in. Likewise, Savior's Shimmer sword proved ineffective, simply smashing into Charaxes without doing much damage. With a thought, the Shimmer lost the sword form and burst into multiple lines that wrapped around the giant insect's body—lines which contracted sharply in an attempt to crack through Charaxes' exoskeleton, not unlike how one would eat a lobster.

Charaxes was having none of it though and retaliated, swinging two of its limbs about and nearly catching Robin and Scalpel while the other two grasped a claw-full of Shimmer and made to cut through it. Deciding having his power cut through wasn't a great way to start a fight, Savior divided it quickly along the claws, directing it to flow over and around them before calling it back to himself and pulling back a safe distance. At that moment, Starfire darted in and slammed two starbolts into its chest at point-blank range, detonating them instantly and sending Charaxes hurtling down the street. A charged shot from Cyborg's sonic cannon further propelled the man-turned-insect down the street, simultaneously throwing several of its senses out of whack. Gauntlet and Raven stood waiting at the expected landing zone, a car wrapped in their separate powers. Charaxes hit a minivan, denting its side and nearly throwing the vehicle over. Two more vehicles followed, one crushing Charaxes between it and the minivan, the other coming down on to of those two. Large chunks of rock, cement, and asphalt came together, further compacting the mass of automobile and abomination before finally, the whole mass exploded, raining chunks of metal debris across the street.

"Did we get it?" Beast Boy asked, not making the mistake of going closer to the flaming wreckage than he had to. Experience had taught them all better than that.

"CHAAARAXESSSS!" roared the man-creature of the same name as it smashed its way out of the minor crater recently created. It took to the air and came swooping in at the nearest Titan, Beast Boy coincidentally enough. Unfortunately for it, the Titans had all been expecting something along those lines. BB's form quickly shifted from teenage-boy to thirty-foot-green-brachiosaur and he whipped his tail around, slamming it into Charaxes with as much force as he dared to use—he didn't want to leave a large yellow-and-black splatter stain all over the side of one of the nearby buildings and then have to explain to what was left of Drury Walker's family that yes, that stain was indeed all that was left of the man. He needn't have worried about that though as Charaxes crashed through a wall of solid concrete and rebar (I think that's what the metal bars are called), shook it off, and flew back out.

A few well-aimed shots from Cyborg's machine gun punched through the underside of Charaxes' wings and sent him tumbling to the ground, effectively cutting off his flight ability. For the moment, Charaxes crouched where it had fallen, taking in its foes. Likewise, the Titans circled the monstrosity, preparing for another attack. "Bladed weapons seem ineffective," Scalpel pointed out offhand as he came near Robin.

Robin agreed, trying to find a weak point vulnerable to an edged weapon but was hard pressed. Only the joints of its exoskeleton and its eyes really looked like they would he worth going for, but he wasn't going to blind or permanently cripple the man that it once was if there was even a chance of bringing him back. "Pound the hell out of it. I don't think we have to worry about holding back any more. If he's as tough as he seems, it will take a lot more than that to put him down. Just don't tear anything off that looks vital."

Having apparently had enough of their standoff, Charaxes stepped forward, drawing its pincered arms inward and spreading its wing carapaces. From underneath the hard shells that had protected its wings until Cyborg had unloaded several rounds into them where they were most vulnerable, its tail extended and flicked back and forth behind it. It roared and charged headlong into the group of Titans.

Having already once faced Charaxes, Beast Boy had a fairly good idea of just what it could do, so met it in another dinosaur form, that of a triceratops. He swung his horns in, trying to smash or gore the oversized bug, but it ignored the changeling and jumped straight over, flicking its tail towards Beast Boy and scoring a hit, but not penetrating his skin. As the monster moved on, it spewed what looked like webbing or silk from spinnerets in its tail, catching BB's feet and lower body between some of the sticky substance and causing him to fall over as he turned to follow. When the Titan tried to break free or shift forms, it conformed to accommodate whatever shape he took, leaving him to figure out a way out of it on his own.

Ignoring the changeling for now, Charaxes rushed Scalpel, bringing its two vaguely human arms down in an attempt to slam the alien to the ground. They met with Scalpel's glaive and the doctor struggled for a moment to hold it off in a contest of wills. Proving the giant insect was more intelligent than they had first thought, or just able to see an opportunity when it presented itself, it rammed its two long pincer-claws into either side of Scalpel's abdomen before raising a foot and kicking him off, tearing out chunks of flesh on the serrated edges of those claws. His weapon forgotten, Scalpel clutched his wounds from his position on the street. They were deep—hell, they had gone all the way through, and were one looking from the proper angle, they might see straight out the other side—and nasty, but they has missed anything vital. He would live, but ye gods it HURT like a sonova-bitch.

The rest of the Titans, seeing one of their number injured already, redoubled their efforts. Starfire's booted foot collided with Charaxes' back, sending him flying over and away from Scalpel and into a street lamp. Not one to let an opportunity go to waste, Robin quickly pulled out an explosive disc and hurled it at Charaxes, igniting the napalm-like alien blood staining its claws. Charaxes was...completely unaffected by the flames. Picking himself up from the street, he swung out one of his claws/pincers and cut the light post cleanly in twain near the bottom and grabbed that end of it with his two humanoid hands. He swung at Robin as he was the nearest Titan, but the Teen Wonder neatly jumped over the swing and used a couple of flips backwards to put distance between himself and the light.

The ground shook and the rock golem Terra had been working on for the past few minutes pulled itself from underneath Charaxes. It was roughly the same height as the man-bug, but much denser than Terra would normally make something like this. With concentration, she lifted its arm and smashed its fist into Charaxes. Charaxes stumbled, off balance for a second, before rotating quickly and bringing the lamp post with it, smashing Terra's golem half. "Well that was a waste of time," the girl muttered, cursing under her breath as she abandoned the golem and used its various parts to pummel Charaxes.

Joining the hail of rock debris were newspaper boxes, mail boxes, a vending machine, and a Shimmer-wrapped manhole cover courtesy of Raven and Savior. Charaxes ignored the smaller debris, but the manhole cover slamming into the back of its head was pretty hard to ignore. When it turned, Gauntlet and Cyborg were there with an energy battering ram and a sonic cannon blast waiting for it. The combined attacks smashed into Charaxes, but it held its ground as its feet dug and it started to slide backwards—that is, until the ground shook and cracked before turning to rubble under its feet courtesy of Terra, which sent it sprawling back. "What does it take to squash this thing?" Gauntlet yelled, giant energy fly-swatter already forming above Charaxes as he brought it down several times. Charaxes managed to stand between blows and Rob redoubled his efforts as the energy became a boot and again slammed the bug into the ground.

Gauntlet let up on his onslaught, slightly winded. Charaxes AGAIN stood, bringing the street lamp with it and smashing it into a Gauntlet-shield, sending the boy flying in the other direction where he smashed into a truck. Several explosive discs, sonic cannon blasts, starbolts, telekinetic blasts, and large chunks of street slammed into Charaxes, disorienting it for only a moment before it shook them off and jumped into the air, bringing the lamp post up and then back down, intending to hit Robin. A pair of hands intercepted it midair as Starfire caught it. "You will NOT turn my boyfriend into paste!" she yelled, picking up the lamp, Charaxes with it, and slamming them both into the side of a building.

Charaxes returned the favor, using his better leverage to smash Starfire loose from his weapon. The girl flew up and apparently deciding she could HAVE the lamp post, Charaxes reared back and flung it at her. The lamp post never made it as it was melted in midair by a pair of starbeams fired from the alien girl's eyes. While it was occupied with Star, Beast Boy—who had gotten free from his cocoon-like bindings—rushed up from its back side in the form of a gorilla, smashing his fists into Charaxes and knocking the creature off-balance. Charaxes turned around to confront his latest assailant but was again smashed with Savior's manhole cover. It ignored the large piece of metal and wrapped its clawed hands around one of Beast Boy's arms before flinging him into Savior where the pair rolled across the ground before coming to a stop.

As it started towards the temporarily down pair, a volley of mini-missiles slammed into its back, courtesy of Cyborg, while Starfire flew in and gave it a swift kick between the legs, sending it spinning into the air. Halfway through its flip, Charaxes' tail fired off more of the cocoon material, binding Starfire's arms to her sides. That proved ineffective though as she simply ripped through them a moment later and flew in with a starbolt-powered punch to its midsection. The tail snaked around again, this time intending to embed itself into the alien nuisance when Robin, who had been hanging back and waiting for an opportunity to take that particular annoyance out, flung the birdarang he'd kept ready. The spinning projectile cut neatly through the tail, severing it from Charaxes.

With the tail gone, Robin ran in with his staff and began wailing on Charaxes, slamming the end of it into any area of its exoskeleton that looked weak. Blow after blow rained down on the beast as Starfire joined in, adding fists, feet, and the occasional starbolt or beam to the onslaught. Charaxes was forced back several paces before becoming further infuriated and launching its own counterattack. Its movements almost a blur, it smashed both Titans away with a roar to reveal Savior running in to take their place. A Shimmer bludgeon slammed into its midsection, quickly pulling back and hammering it several times before splitting off into smaller strands. Each of those strands grew sharp protrusions, which Savior tried to force beneath Charaxes' exoskeleton.

Charaxes loosed a roar of pain and fury as a few of the Shimmer strands worked their way beneath its armor, clearly intent on pulling it off, while Starfire and Robin recovered and resumed pounding the crap out of it from either side. His mandibles spread and Charaxes spat out more cocoon material, attempting to wrap the white-garbed Titan up. Several blade-shaped Shimmer strands cut through the material and slammed into its mouth, forcing the mandibles open and digging out Charaxes' spinnerets. The flow of cocoon material stopped as Charaxes pulled back, its maw dripping with its own blood. Several strands of Shimmer material still tried to pry off parts of its exoskeleton from the inside, but it wasn't budging. Opening its mouth again, Charaxes spewed its acidic saliva at Savior. A black shield snapped up in front of the boy as Raven joined him, slamming a force bolt into Charaxes' head, along with several large chunks of metal and street.

Giving up his frontal assault, Robin slapped a pair of explosive discs onto Charaxes' side, signaling Savior and Starfire to back away. The pair complied, after Star swung a leg around in a powerful roundhouse kick, which send Charaxes stumbling further away from the Titans. Once they were clear, Robin set off the explosive discs. The simultaneous explosions were enough to send the creature reeling, along with further cutting half of its senses off.

As the trio of Robin, Star, and Savior prepared to launch another assault, Scalpel's glaive—followed closely by a couple hundred pounds of said alien—slammed into Charaxes from the side. It appeared Nigel was back in the game. His wounds were closed—probably thanks to Raven—but still sore. Even so, he could fight again, and so there he was. He followed up the swing with another, catching Charaxes behind the head and sending it face-first into the asphalt. Again coming to his feet, Charaxes charged Scalpel in an attempt to rend the alien to shreds, only to have a large delivery truck surrounded by yellow energy come crashing down on his head. Several hundred newspapers spilled from the truck and onto the street. Gauntlet was back in the fight. "I couldn't find a giant rolled-up newspaper, so these will have to do."

"What does it take to keep this thing down?" Beast Boy asked, rejoining the group even as Charaxes burst free of the newspaper truck. Half a dozen energy types and projectiles met the creature, sending it back into the truck.

Charaxes launched itself from the truck and landed in their midst, scattering the gathered Titans. He managed to catch Savior with a wild swing, sending the teen flying through the air as several Shimmer strands shot out to grab anything nearby. Unfortunately, several of those strands tore into an electricity pole, bringing it down nearly on top of him as he landed.

Gauntlet formed a giant baseball bat with his energy and smashed it into Charaxes, sending him stumbling into Beast Boy in the form of an ankylosaurus. The armored ball on the tail of BB's current form swung around, catching Charaxes in the chest and actually cracking the exoskeleton. As the insect-man flew through the air, a super-charged starbolt slammed into him from above, detonating and sending him crashing to the street, further cracking the exoskeleton, followed closely by Starfire as she made a powered-dive and attempted to drive Charaxes through the street and into the sewers. After Starfire cleared the area, the street crater Charaxes found himself buried in suddenly trembled before contracting and smashing him from all sides in a giant fist which then threw the beast further down the street, where Cyborg and Robin waited with sonic cannon, missiles, and every disc Robin had left that would put a dent in it primed and ready to go. The pair fired and threw their weapons which collided with Charaxes in an improvised Sonic Boom attack, which was followed by a hail of starbolts and a yellow energy mallet. Charaxes again got to its feet, dazed and wounded. Its exoskeletal armor smoked in places and chunks had fallen off in others. The beating wasn't over. Scalpel came in again, putting all the force he could muster behind a grand-slam swing of his glaive, putting Charaxes in the air once more and further expanding the cracks in its armor. Midair, he was again met with a volley of telekinetic blasts and starbolts, again slamming him into the street near Savior's position. The fight hadn't gone out of Charaxes as he stood, mandibles spread and mouth open to roar his defiance when a voice from behind caught his attention. "Hey, bug."

Charaxes turned.

"Meet zapper," Savior tossed out, using the Shimmer to propel a pair of live power lines into the large gap in its armor. Charaxes went rigid as electricity coursed through its body, forcing all of its muscles to contract at once. Its bioluminescence kicked in at that moment, nearly blinding, but shut off as soon as Savior removed the lines and Charaxes fell, smoking, to the pavement. He didn't get up. Dropping the lines, Savior strode up to the downed man-turned-monster and found that he was alive, amazingly—unconscious, but alive. A raspy groan came from its mouth, but it remained still. Savior could have sworn he saw a puff of smoke in that exhalation. "It could have been worse," Savior told him standing and rejoining his teammates. "Could have been a windshield."

* * *

"Ok, so let me get this straight," Gauntlet addressed Beast Boy shortly thereafter. "The guy ALREADY looked like a freaky moth guy, then he chemically mutated himself to look like a FREAKIER moth guy?"

Gar nodded. "Yeah, what's your point?"

"Oh, nothing," Rob shrugged. "It's just like Bill Gates selling his soul for another billion dollars. And why a MOTH! Why not something cool like a falcon, or a wasp, or even a dingo would be cooler than a friggin MOTH! Killer Dingo: now THAT has a nice ring to it."

The Titans had called in Star Labs as soon as they were sure Charaxes was down. A team from Star Labs was sent with a containment van to collect Charaxes and take him back to their labs for further study. The police had been called shortly after Star Labs, mainly to alert them of the situation and have them send down a team to remove Charaxes' victims. The Titans had gone down to check the scene out for themselves and free any remaining prisoners... and what they had found was grim. Charaxes had been given too much time to wander free and hunt for prey. The Titans freed the other captives and led those who could walk—carrying those who couldn't—back to the surface. By the time they got there, the police had arrived, along with the team from Star Labs. Apparently, the lab had sent the team ahead and they had been on the outskirts of the city waiting for confirmation before moving in.

Beast Boy and Gauntlet joined Cyborg, who was conversing with the team leader from the lab. There, the two of them elaborated on what Charaxes had done, what traits he had shown, and the damage they had done to him to give them some idea of what an undamaged Charaxes should be like. Robin and Raven were talking to the chief of police about pretty much the same thing. Scalpel sat by one of the coroner's vans and waited—the coroner had been forced to call in more than one. His night wasn't over yet, as he would be joining Sophie at the morgue, as everyone on call had been asked to come in. Tara eventually pulled Gar and Rob away from Vic and convinced them to help her distribute coffee, cocoa, and tea someone from the police department had been thoughtful enough to bring. In all likelihood, the drinks contained a mild sedative, but the people there could probably use it. Charaxes' paralysis venom had worn off of most of the victims by now, though a few were still having difficulty moving, and all of them were feeling the aftereffects. That left Starfire and Savior. Kory took it upon herself to talk to Kitten about her father and Noel... Noel watched, listened, and brooded on what he had learned earlier in the evening and what needed to be done now. A scene from the security footage taken from Drury Walker's computer flashed through his mind repeatedly. Drury, Neron turned away as if he was about to leave if his offer was rejected, looking towards the ceiling and mouthing a word—one word: "Kitten." His mind made up, Savior strode up to where Kitten was seated on the back of an ambulance.

She looked up as he approached and Savior made sure he had her attention before he spoke. "Cyborg, you and Star Labs did some research. In your best estimate, can this condition be reversed?" he asked of the machine-man who stood nearby, still conferring with the head person from the labs.

Looking up, Cyborg regarded Kitten—huddled beneath a thick blanket and nursing a cup of coffee—before turning his attention to Savior. "I ran it by the guys at the lab to confirm what BB and I found. I'm sorry but no, it can't be treated. It's permanent. Even if they did eventually find a way to reverse it, his mind... going back and forth between forms like that... The strain was too much for a human mind to handle going through the first time."

Savior gave Kitten enough time to let that information sink in before asking his next question. "Well, are you happy?" he asked, voice low with barely contained fury. So many people were dead, and it all came down to how this one person had been a snotty little shit to a father that wanted nothing more than to please his daughter.

Kitten's lips trembled and she clenched her jaw, trying to control the feelings swirling inside of her, fighting for dominance—fear, sadness, anger, hate, resentment, loss... but most of all, a biting numbness, a void that threatened to consume her from within. "It.. it's not my fault! I couldn't do anything," she mumbled, losing the nerve to look him in the face. "Why would he...? He just... I'm sorry," her voice hitched and she choked back a sob. She was nearing her breaking point. "I did _nothing_ to—"

Savior cut her off. "Nothing?" Savior cut in quietly, shutting her up and drawing her attention back to him, along with that of those around them. "Oh, you did NOTHING all right. All you did was have a father who was willing to give you the world. A father who could never please you. A father who willingly TURNED HIMSELF INTO A CANNIBALISTIC MONSTER IN AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY! NOT YOUR FAULT? IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!"

Kitten opened her mouth to protest, but Savior stepped forward, his power lifting her from the back of the ambulance so her face was even with his, and grabbed her chin, fingers digging into her jaw slightly though not enough to do damage. "Twenty-seven are dead. They died in agony. _ALL_ of them were more deserving to live than you, and yet here you are you stupid, stupid little girl." A pause, and then, "There are lessons you can learn here. Please," here, he leaned in more closely, his nose almost touching hers. "Learn the wrong ones. Blame us instead of yourself. Continue down the path of bratdom to self-righteous hypocritical lunatic. Give me an excuse to put you down hard one day—I can't do it now. Give me a chance one day to do it... Or never darken our door AGAIN!"

He let go and turned away. Kitten fell into the back of the ambulance but didn't get back up. She broke. Beside the ambulance, having stood there and watched the whole confrontation, Kory glanced down at the girl in pity before taking a steadying breath and floating after Savior. "Did you have to be so harsh?" she asked, cutting off his stalk towards his next target: a dark-haired girl sitting limply against the side of the parking complex out of everyone's way and looking completely lost.

Glancing back towards where Kitten had still not gotten up, Savior nodded. "People like that have skulls of stone, Star. The only way to get the message across is with a hammer. If it takes, she'll thank me some day. And if not... I'll be waiting for her."

"She is just a child! A child who has lost her father. She has not faced battle as we have. You can not expect her to just harden her heart to the world."

"No, I was hoping for the opposite. She'll feel terrible. So terrible, I hope, she gets the message that she can _not_ treat people like objects."

Kory understood, though she did not wish that on anyone. "No one should have to learn that way," she said quietly before going to join Tim.

Savior turned his gaze back towards Kate and made his way over to her position, until he stood almost directly above her. "Medley."

Her name cut across the chill air, the force behind it commanding attention and demanding an immediate response. Medley—not Kate—stood up shakily from where she'd been watching the recovery teams bringing up bodies. Her sixth sense lit up as she regarded the older Titan, drawn in like.. a moth to a flame. She hesitated only a moment. "...Yes, Savior?"

"What have you learned today?"

The question was so simple, so out of the blue, that she blinked and it took a moment to realize that it wasn't rhetorical. The answers to that question were not as simple. Her eyes were drawn past Savior to where she knew Kitten lay still. After spending the past several hours feeling everything around her as though those feelings were her own, she thought she knew the answer. "That we shouldn't push others to further our own goals... treat them like soulless objects with no purpose than to serve our will."

"And what have you learned most of all?"

Her eyes followed his glance towards where the containment crew from Star Labs was loading the electrically-charred form of Charaxes into a secure tube. That moth circled closer... "...How terrible real evil can be."

"Did you think this was terrible, Medley?"

There was no hesitation this time when she answered. "Yes."

Savior gave her an eerie look, something she didn't quite have the experience to identify written in his expression. "Then hope that this is the worst. But expect that some day, this will be paradise compared to the things out there."

Recent experiences flashed before the girl's mind's-eye, nearly blindsiding her in their intensity. Something more terrible than the things she had witnessed today? "W-what?"

"This is our life Medley. Of gods..." Here, he regarded Charaxes, its containment tube being loaded into the Star Labs van. That flame suddenly grew cold, terribly cold. "And monsters. The latter grossly outweigh the former. And they have VERY sharp teeth." Finished, he walked away, leaving her to her thoughts.

Katie's moth fell, its wings frozen.

* * *

The Titans, minus Nigel, plus recruit reached Titan Tower early the next morning. Three a.m. found that the Titans—those that were in the Tower anyway—had retired to bed. Well, most of them anyway. Kate's door stood open and the girl in question sat on her bed with the lights on. Her legs were pulled up to her chest, with her arms wrapped around her knees to hold them in place. Something drew near from the other end of the hallway and her eyes, which had been half-closed in a losing battle against sleep, snapped open as she focused her attention on whatever was coming. She heard a switch at the end of the hall being flipped and the hall lights came on at half illumination. A girl she hadn't seen before trudged quietly down the hall past her door. The girl looked up, noticing the open door and someone she hadn't seen before. She was around Kate's height, though with a slightly more heavyset build—not fat, but not skinny like Tara either. The word 'normal' came to mind.

"'Morning," Kate greeted, the word muffled by her knees as she hadn't bothered to lift her head.

"'Morning," Sophie agreed tiredly, moving further down the hall and opening a nearby door before trudging in. She didn't have to ask what the rookie was doing sitting with her lights on at this time of night.

Nigel followed shortly thereafter, his clawed feet making soft thunks on the carpeted floor. The exhaustion Sophie felt was echoed in his face. He was tired, sore, drained, and all he really wanted at the moment was to crawl into bed next to Sophie and forget the world existed beyond their little square of reality for the next six-to-eight hours. That didn't stop him from pausing to regard the open door. "Want to talk about it?" he asked quietly so as not to disturb the others.

Kate shook her head, waving one hand in the general direction of Nigel's bedroom. "No, 's'all right. Go get some sleep." Nigel nodded, slipping into his room and closing the door softly, but not before flicking the hall lights back off. "Thanks for asking," she said, knowing he could hear her through the door.

As soon as she felt the unnamed girl and Nigel fall asleep, Kate let her eyes slip half-closed and turned her attention inward. The nightmare that had driven her to camp with the lights on played itself out in her head again. Charaxes stood there before them—she knew now that it was Kitten who had been bound next to her—and fed. One after another, after another it tore into human beings, devouring their life before their eyes. She could see his current victim's face, tear-and-sweat-streaked with pain. The head suddenly turned to look at her, its face accusing. Charaxes tossed it aside and pulled another person from nowhere. The same thing happened again, and again, and again. A girl floated off to Kate's right, just outside her field of vision—a figment remembered from another dream. What she could see of the girl though was a wavering dress over bare feet and long black hair that fluttered forward apparently of its own free will. The girl said nothing, just simply watched with Kate. Eventually though, she did speak.

"_The lives of those lost to what you fled rest on your shoulders because you had the ability to stop it, yet did nothing."_

Kate's head jerked up again as she realized she'd drifted off. A figure leaning against her door-frame caught her attention, letting her know that she was still dreaming. Medley spoke.

"Now do you see?" she asked quietly. Kate nodded slowly. "Good. Remember, those with the ability to act have the responsibility to do so." The pair was silent for a long time after that as Kate stared at the floor and tried to avoid thinking. Medley watched, her face showing deep empathy for her... what? None of the words in Kate's vocabulary seemed to fit any more. So, what _had_ they become? Out of desperation and will to live, she had linked the two of them on nearly every level, leaving only their individual memories and thoughts un-mingled, and even those bled over on a subconscious level from time to time as their bond became stronger—as they were doing now. Eventually, inevitably, there would be no distinction between them any longer. Medley knew that was what had prompted Kate to take up her name as a mantle—not just the fact that she was coaching the girl in her sleep when she could, as she was now.

Kate looked up, her green eyes meeting the orange of her other self. Her mind was made up. "Never again... _whatever_ it takes."

Medley smiled. Maybe there was hope for the two of them, yet.

* * *

That morning—or noon, rather—found most of the Titans and guests gathered round the kitchen table with a card game, and those not there in the adjacent living room, playing video games. Well, all of them save for Rob, who had elected to sleep in. They had been awakened some time earlier by a visitor at the Tower's front door. Looking up from their game, Kory glanced around what she could see as though just realizing something was amiss. "Where is..."

At that moment though, Rob walked on stage from his room, something bundled under his arm in what looked to be his bed sheets. He wore a 'Kiss the Cook' apron (which had a line through 'cook' and 'stud' written in black magic marker under it) and chef's hat, along with an oddly serious and calm look on his face.

Studio Audience: WHOOOooooo!

"Was that the fourth wall again?" Tim asked idly, putting down a card.

From the other side of the kitchen, mostly hidden from view, Rob looked up from where he had been digging through cabinets. "It's my turn to take care of dinner, guys. Where's the frying pan?"

"I believe the pan of frying is in the washer of dishes," Kory answered, having helped do that particular task the morning before.

"Thank you," Rob called, digging around through the dishwasher and locating the item in question.

A minute of odd sounds that sounded suspiciously like a struggle of some sort finally caused Victor to succumb to his curiosity and ask. "Hey Rob, what're we havin'?"

"Silk worm."

"Mm, sounds..." Vic paused. "Wait, what?"

Kory immediately leapt from the table. "MY SILKIE!"

"Release it Starfire!" Rob yelled as the pair tugged the giant silk worm between them in some cruel variant of tug-of-war. "It's a matter of honor!"

"But I'm his Knorfka... what has he done to inspire these feelings of homicide?" she asked, eyes growing large and shiny with unshed tears.

"He ate my copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1! Now, he must _die_."

"Someone help me!" Kory called, turning to her friends. "Gar! He was your pet first!"

Gar looked up from his cards long enough to regard the pair. "I dunno... what condition was the comic in?"

Throwing a glare at the worm, Rob replied. "Good to mint."

Gar jerked upright, knocking his chair over and slamming his fists onto the table. "BURN THE HEATHEN!"

Successfully pulling Silkie away from Kory, Rob turned back to the stove only to find his frying pan gone. "Huh?"

A resounding CLANG! and a thud signaled Rob's release of Silkie... and consciousness for the moment. Dropping the pan, Kory quickly picked up the worm and made her was back to the kitchen, clutching it protectively and cooing at it. "It is ok; I will not let mean Robert cook you."

"Gar," Noel said, grabbing the boy's attention. "Silkie WAS originally your pet."

"But a near-perfect copy of Amazing Spider-man #1... It deserves DEATH!" he whined/yelled, pointing at the silkworm. Kory hugged it closer to her.

By this time, Rob's short trip into la-la land had ended and he was back on his feet in time to watch as Noel rolled his eyes and pulled out his communicator. Switching it to phone mode, he dialed the eleven digits from memory. "Hello, Mrs. Candide? Could you tell Pangloss that they're going to cancel Friends or something if a mint copy of Amazing Spider Man #1 doesn't magically appear on the table in front of us?"

"He's too smart for that!" Rob protested. A BAMF! and a puff of smoke over the table revealed a comic laying before the group. "See? Fantastic Four #1, smartass!"

"And that isn't equally valuable?" Noel asked, putting away the T-com.

"Nnnnope. Besides, it's a forgery. Pangloss doesn't have the attention span to make it right."

"Explain," Noel said, frowning at the comic as it was picked up.

Leafing through it quickly, Rob stopped and set it back on the table, pointing at the page it was turned to. "See! Right here, it changes into an issue of Teen Titans Go #5."

Noel glanced at the page. "Let me see that," he said, picking it up and flipping through its pages.

The other Titans, having remained silent through this simply shook their heads, until Tara spoke up. "Is it just me, or is the fact that Pangloss can will something like that into existence half a world away and screw up halfway through just a little disturbing?"

* * *

Captain's Log, Starda... err.. Author's Notes: Originally, I had planned for this to be a three part arc, but you (read as "I") can only draw out a fight with a formless cloud of bugs for so long. I couldn't make it a three-parter and keep my self-imposed 8500+ minimum word limit per chapter. This way, you get two large chapters without all the messy interruptions. (Ok, so that's only half-true. There's a huge freaking time-gap between the two chapters, due to the vacation I said I'd be taking with my fiancée and my job.) Big, BIG, freaking hellaciously big thanks to LegendMaker for giving me ALL of Teh Funneh that appears in this chapter. If it made you laugh or even smile, it was hers and/or Bobcat's, as I think he gave it to her when she asked but I don't remember and can't find it in my logs. No idea when the next chapter will be out, but I think I'll wait until I'm one ahead before posting it. 


	7. Fires of Trial: Fear the Music

**Gods' Playground**

07 – Fires of Trial: Fear the Music

Medley landed with a quiet thump before again taking off at a run into the city night. What had possessed her to be the only other Titan out in the middle of the night, dashing from rooftop to rooftop in the cold? It may have had something to do with the Charaxes incident not so very long ago. Or it may have been the battle with Metronome. Or, it may have had more to do with the figure she was chasing after. In a way, all were connected. Idly, her mind turned over the events leading up to the present.

* * *

Five Weeks Ago: 

This day started out much as those of the recent past had for Kate, if a little earlier. Five-thirty a.m. announced itself with the sound of a digital alarm clock going off somewhere to the side of Kate's bed. A slender hand slowly snaked its way out from under her covers, searching vainly for the source of the annoyance. Unfortunately, she'd had the presence of mind the previous night to move the clock out of arm's reach, which meant she would have to at least sit up before shutting it off. She was currently in the process of training herself to become an early riser.

Slapping the pillow in frustration, the hand lifted again and the pair of bracelets adorning it dissolved in a burst of light, reappearing a moment later in her clenched fist as a sword. The sword came down swiftly, cutting the alarm clock (and the table it sat on) cleanly in half, silencing it forever. The sword returned to its dormant bracelet-form and the hand slunk back under the covers in a self-satisfied manner. It seemed that her early-to-rise training would take some time to set in.

Several minutes later, Kate sat up and turned bleary eyes towards a clock that wasn't there. After giving up trying to figure out what happened to the clock and her night-stand, she stumbled out of bed dragging half the sheets with her. After untangling her feet, she picked up a nearby towel and headed for her door. A flash of white light from under the door—in the hallway, most likely—drew her attention and she opened the door part-way. After catching a glimpse of a red blur (her eyes still hadn't quite focused), something slammed her door shut from the outside. Blinking, she opened the door again and stuck her head out, regarding the empty hallway. Shrugging, she stepped out into the hall and walked the necessary distance to the bathroom. It was locked. Frowning, she directed her pajama-clad form into the elevator and stabbed at the button that would take her to another floor with a shower with an outstretched finger.

After a shower and a change of clothes, Kate found her way into the kitchen. She could tell by the pot of coffee, kettle of water, and used coffee cups that Robin and Savior were up already, and Raven would probably also be so soon. Scrounging through the refrigerator, she settled on a slice of cold leftover pizza and cup of chocolate milk for breakfast. After throwing up breakfast twice during morning workouts, she had learned to eat sparingly—if at all—before morning practice.

Finished eating, she washed out her cup and left it in the sink for whoever drew morning cleanup duty the night before, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and left the tower. Once outside, she made her way to the training course where she stretched and warmed up for several minutes before bringing up the control panel that would allow her to set the field difficulty and start the course. Cyborg had been kind—and patient—enough to show her how to work the machine after she'd asked and she understood enough to get it started. The console came up and the screen lit with a dialogue prompt.

_Identify._

'Medley,' she typed into the lighted keypad.

_Password._

The next response was slower in coming as she had to remember what letters formed what words. She had been forced to memorize a pass phrase that would allow her to access the Tower and its systems. 'Actions define us in the eyes of history, inaction defines us in our hearts.'

_Cleared. Training field difficulty setting?_

The field had difficulty settings up to thirty (zero being empty and thirty being impossible for any one person), or so she had been told. Currently she was at stage five of the custom settings that had been geared towards her, but this was just meant as a warm up exercise. 'Rookie 3.'

_Enemy/obstacle types?_

'Random.'

_Time limit?_

'10:00'

_Confirm settings. User: Medley. Difficulty: custom. Enemies/Obstacles: random. Time limit: ten minutes._

'Confirm.'

_Settings confirmed. Program initiation in T-0:10, 0:09, ..._

Drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Kate stepped into the course and started the shift of mentalities from new-girl Katie to Titan-in-training Medley, the (hopefully) soon-to-be battle hardened shell she was attempting to craft for herself. A buzzer went off from somewhere above and the ground dropped out from under her feet. After falling several feet, she latched onto the walls of the square watery hole that had opened up beneath her. A push/tug of power later sent her flying from the hole in a nice arch over the first part of the field. She'd found that if she was close enough to an object with enough mass, she could use her powers alone to propel herself along its surface, without having to touch or kick off every few feet, and the walls of the drop that had opened beneath her were perfect for that.

As she landed, the only warning to what would come next was a click and hum. She threw herself to the side as several lasers fired on her previous position. These were easy to dodge, IF you knew they were coming. As we all know, it's impossible to dodge a beam of light...unless you're a speed force user, or maybe Superman. Seeing as she was neither of those and wasn't harnessing any related powers at the moment, she stuck to weaving between them as quickly as she could. Ahead, the ground opened up to reveal a watery pit crossable only by poles sticking up to ground level. Each was far enough apart that one would be required to jump from pole to pole if they wanted to cross—unless that person could fly.

Hopping onto the first pole, Medley's eyes scanned them for a quick way through. Decided on her path, she hopped to the next, then the next... which shook violently underfoot. Crouching slightly, she regained her balance and made off for the next one. Halfway into the poles, several small nozzles broke the surface of the water below. As she neared one, it activated and sent a high-powered stream of water her way. The water caught her full in the chest, forcing her back and off the pole. The water shut off and Medley readjusted her hold on gravity, grabbing the pole mid-fall. Shoving off from the pole sent her into the air and further into the field.

The course continued like this until the timer she had set ran out—she would dodge, weave, and jump through obstacles, strike the occasional holographic enemy in the required place, and navigate the maze that was the Titans training field. The buzzer sounded and the field deactivated. The girl stretched once more before taking in the state of her uniform. It was partially soaked, but none the worse for wear. After she'd gone through three sets of normal clothes (one had been singed beyond hope, another ripped to damn near indecent tatters, and the third she didn't want to think about), Tim had been forced to scrounge the Tower for a temporary set of gear the girl could use until he could get her a personalized outfit. Pulling at her shirt to keep it from sticking to her skin, she made her way back into the Tower to change into her only other set of battle clothes and do something about the set she had on currently.

Upon entering her bedroom, Kate found a surprise waiting for her on the foot of her bed. A pair of cardboard boxes with 'Medley' written on the side waited for her. Closing her door and stepping up to the bed, she found a note taped to the top of one, on top of which sat a yellow and black circle with a small protrusion jutting from its top and a small booklet beside that. She pushed away the piece of metal and plastic and took the note. It was in someone's handwriting she hadn't seen before and she took a few moments to decipher it.

_I special ordered these for you and they should do for now. Hope you like them._

Setting the note aside, she opened the box it had been atop. Inside, she found a trio of long sleeved shirts (one dark green, one light blue, and one a dark grey—each emblazoned with a small pair of orange crests in the center, a few inches below the neckline) made of an odd feeling material, an equal number of what looked like jeans (two black and one the blue of actual jeans), and what looked like a thin black and grey utility belt with a circular buckle (though lacking the Titan 'T'). In the other box were two half-jackets (one solid black, the other black with dark green highlights) and a pair of short boots.

After changing into one of the new sets of clothes, Kate found she was most impressed with the boots. Outside they looked too big for her small feet, but on the inside they were comfortably snug. The toes felt a little stiff and she guessed that they were metal-shod. Snapping the belt on over her pants as it didn't look like it would fit through the loops, she stood and checked herself out in the mirror. They felt slightly heavier than she was used to, but nothing she couldn't live with. "I look so cool," she grinned, snapping the new T-com to her belt before dashing out to meet Robin for their morning practice session.

"You like them?" Tim asked as Kate joined him in the weight room.

Grinning, the girl in question nodded. "Oh yes."

The rest of the day went by as those of the more recent past had. When she wasn't practicing or running herself around the island, Kate spent her time picking up the nuances of the English language in writing. Most of _that_ time was spent trying to decipher the instruction manual for the T-com she'd found atop the boxes on her bed. And that is where we rejoin her, several days and more pages later, sitting at the kitchen table and killing time until the meeting later in the day.

As she turned the page, Rob wandered in behind her, rummaged through one of the cabinets and filled a glass from the tap before returning to the game he had going against Nigel in the living room. Something dripped loudly behind her but Kate ignored it. This continued for the next five minutes but the girl refused to get up and fix the faucet. One more drip and her concentration—and patience—snapped. Narrowing her eyes, she unconsciously focused on the faucet and willed it to stop dripping. It stopped. Sighing in glee, she returned to her studies.

It was close to a half hour later before Victor strolled into the kitchen and dug through the fridge, coming out with a large sandwich of some sort. He turned to get a plate from the cupboard and nearly dropped his lunch. There, floating just beneath the faucet was a soft-ball sized drop of water. He blinked to clear away the sight but it remained. A small drop of water fell from the faucet and merged with the larger drop. His eyes sought out the girl sitting a few feet in front of the drop. "Kate, are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" she asked, turning the page.

"That," Victor said, pointing behind her.

Kate looked up from the book and turned around to see what he was talking about. Halfway there, the drop lost cohesion and fell, splashing into the sink. She opened her mouth to say that no, she hadn't been doing that when another small drop fell from the faucet. This time, she felt her power catch it before it could fall completely and was aware of doing so. She stood, moving quickly to the sink and bent in close to examine the tiny droplet. "That is... so very cool," she muttered, releasing her hold on the local gravity and letting the drop fall to the sink.

Given all that he'd seen happen in the Tower up to this point, Victor simply shrugged. It was new, sure, but not the weirdest thing he had ever seen. This just meant that someone—probably himself—would be putting Kate's powers through their paces again to get a better idea of what they could do. Forgetting the plate he'd wanted, he bit into the sandwich as Kory walked into the kitchen. "Oh yeah," he said after swallowing. "We're ready for you upstairs."

* * *

"...concert to be held tonight in memory of James..." 

_Click._

"...mostly cloudy and cold with a chance of showers and thunderstorms later this evening..."

_Click._

"...In related news, negotiations between Vermillion and Collinscorp to buy out the Vancouver building in downtown Jump City have come to a close today. A representative from Collinscorp announced this morning the lay-off of all employees currently working at the facility, which was immediately followed by a more well-recieved announcement by a spokeswoman for Vermillion stating that upon contract renegotiations, nearly all of the soon-to-be terminated employees will retain their former jobs, positions, and benefits."

"Change it, you dork!" Tara yelled at Gar from somewhat of an intricate position. The two of them were seated on the Titans' couch, though using the term 'seated' would be stretching things a bit. It would be more accurate to say that Gar was laying on his back with his legs up, holding Tara suspended above him midair as the girl tried in vain to snatch the television remote from her hysterically laughing boyfriend.

When brute force didn't work, Tara resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the book... sweet-talking her way into getting what she wanted. "Come on Gar, pleeeeease?" Gar... laughed harder, though he didn't laugh last, as his legs gave way and Tara came down on top of him, snatching the remote—and victory—from the changeling's hands.

_Click._

"...and now, the Doctor Phil show."

Beneath the geokinetic, Gar stiffened and had she been looking Tara might have noticed his pupils dialate. "NOOOOO! Not that! Anything but thaaaaat!" he yelled, thrashing about in an effort to dislodge his girlfriend and remove the evil from the screen.

"Come on! It's not as bad as the crap you watch all day," Tara scoffed, holding the remote just outside of Gar's reach.

Gar grinned. "Of course it isn't as bad as the stuff I watch... It's worse, worse I tell you!"

"Pfft. Nothing could be as bad as 'Masked Mexican Wrestler Idol.'"

"Dr. Phil is worse."

"You want to change it?" she asked. Rolling her eyes, Tara sat up long enough to hold open the neck of her shirt and insert the remote in the viscinity of her brassier, creating a large rectangular bulge when she released the shirt collar. "Go ahead, then."

"Oh, like that's going to stop me," Gar grinned. Taking advantage of the fact that the remote stuck out farther than his girlfriend's...assets, Gar poked his finger into her chest area.

_Click._

"...You. Suck." Tara groaned, punctuating each word by poking Gar firmly between the eyes with her index finger.

"You guys are funny," an amused voice commented from behind the couch.

The pair sat up and found, much to their embarassment, that something like a third of the team had gathered to watch their little argument. Tara recovered the fastest and broke the silence. "Uh... hi?"

"How long have you been there?" Gar asked, taking in the amused grins and/or rolled eyes from Kory, Victor, and Kate.

"Since the weather," Kate answered before the others could stop her. It had been Kate who had initially spoken, drawing their attention, as she'd been having more fun watching her friends muck around than actually paying attention to the television. Why she thought they would continue to provide free entertainment once interrupted was a mystery though.

"Perhaps it would be best if you removed the long range control instrument for the television from your shirt. I believe the proper word to describe its location is... grody?" Kory observed, pointing at the device still protruding from underneath Tara's shirt.

"Oh, right!" Tara half yelled, retrieving the remote. "...Hey, wait. My boobs aren't grody!"

"Cause they'd have to be there first," Vic said in a stage whisper towards Gar.

"HEY! I heard that!"

Gar nodded. "He's right though." The sound of silence filled the room. "What?"

"Gar," Tara said quietly, drawing his attention. "How's the back of your knee tasting?"

"Uh... huh?"

"I think she means that you have opened your mouth and inserted your foot, friend Gar."

Realization struck Gar and he paled... or would have, had he not been covered in green fur anyway. "Oh, poop."

"Yeah, that's right. Poop, mister. Deep poop." Tara growled, hands clawed and reaching slowly for his neck.

"Oh, I just remembered we've got somewhere we have to be. Come on guys," Victor announced quickly, nearly dragging Kory and Kate from the room. Once clear, he paused long enough to poke his head back in. "Looks like someone won't be getting any for a while." The remote slamming into the wall next to his head convinced Victor it would be a good idea to continue his retreat for the moment.

* * *

Kory, Victor, and Kate sat around a table in one of the various rooms within the Tower that served as meeting rooms, along with Raven who sat at the head of the table. Raven was there to pass judgement, Kory as an observer and to offer input, and Victor as an impartial intermediary of sorts. The dark clad girl had with her several folders and printouts, which she had been reviewing for the past half hour before the trio arrived. Finally, she commenced the meeting. "Failed," she announced, laying down one of the printouts in her hand. 

Directly across the table, Kate winced. "Crud."

Another paper. "Failed."

"Crap."

"Failed."

"D'oh."

"Impressively..." Raven paused a moment, giving Kate time to sit up in her seat slightly, hope almost glowing in her eyes. "Failed."

Kate's held-in breath exploded out in a single syllable word that faied to adequately express exactly just how frustrated she was at the moment. "Poop."

Apparently, out of the latest batch of tests she'd been given concerning the things she'd been taught while staying at Titan Tower, she hadn't done very well. The results weren't really as bad as they seemed though, which was the topic of their current meeting. When tested on her lessons with most of the other Titans, Kate's results were passable, for the most part.

The physical tests were both the easiest and the hardest—running through the obstacle course set at a middle training level, hand-to-hand and weapons sparring, and sheer endurance runs were all passed with varying degrees of success. Kate even did moderately well on tests on her lessons about the Titans' past adversaries, but there was so much material to cover in so short a period of time that no one really expected her to get it all right the first time. No, it was putting all of this and more together in simulated situations where Kate was forced to make the decisions that gave her the most grief.

"Look," Raven sighed, placing the printouts back in their folders. "Knowing an enemy's weakness means nothing when you don't know the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates. Of these four tests alone, the best score you achieved came with the loss of two of our team. The other two were total losses for the team, and the last... I can't _believe_ you actually managed to blow up the planet. Not even ROB has managed that, and I think he was TRYING at the time."

"Come on Rae, cut the girl some slack," Victor spoke up, though he was mostly inclined to agree. "We all know we're rushing her. I'd say that she's doing better than she _could_ be doing."

"No, Victor, there _is no slack_ to cut. I went to sleep last night wondering what new and interesting ways our... recruit could find to get us killed in the next set of tests. I know these tests are no substitute or judge for the real thing, but they are all we have to go on. She's been here for the past couple of months, yet we still know next to nothing about how or why her powers work, how exactly she came to be here, or why she's still alive at all for that matter."

"All good points," Victor condeded.

"All I'm saying is that she is an unknown, a variable, we have no clue what to expect and apparently, neither does she. I do _not_ like being kept in the dark," Raven grumbled, ignoring her own unintentional pun.

"Perhaps we should give Kate different tests then," Kory suggested, looking up from one of the printouts she had removed from one of the folders.

"Tim's already run her through a dozen of those you're thinking about. What more could we do that he hasn't already covered at least once?" Vic asked, though he already had the answer to that. He had been working on the answer to that question for some time, actually. Tim had originally asked him to take over that part of their observations some time ago, but due to some fluke of scheduleing Vic had never really gotten a chance to test what he'd thrown together.

"I am sure you have something up your sleeve," Kory answered, as though reading his mind.

"That still doesn't address the matter of me failing the scenario simulators," said Kate, who had mostly tuned out the conversation and had, like Kory, attempted to read through the results of her tests. Attempted being the key word, as most of it was wordy and difficult to understand for people who had a firm grasp on the English language and several years of training, let alone someone with about a fourth grade reading level.

Raven shook her head, taking back the printouts once more. "You'll do them again. Pay attention, study more, and keep going through them until you pass." Kate supressed a groan, mumbling quietly to herself. "What?" Raven asked.

"I said 'reading makes my head hurt.'"

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Could be problems with vision," he suggested. "Eventually, we're going to have to have one of the team take her to Metropolis and have a look around. Maybe someone there can tell us more, things not in the records and databases we found."

"It'll have to wait," said Raven, having already discussed this with Tim and Noel. They would, eventually, but not just yet.

"How long?" Kate asked, curious to know what secrets the place she'd come from held about her past.

Raven's grin was small, but there. "When you start passing, perhaps. Think of it as incentive."

Kate nodded, accepting the answer. "That works."

"Does that conclude our meeting?" Kory asked, glancing between Victor and Raven. Receiving nods, she stood and floated for the door. "I shall go tell Tim, then." Raven followed Kory's lead wordlessly, heading for the file room to put away the hard-copy results of Kate's tests.

"Well, looks like it's just you and me," Victor announced, standing and waving Kate to follow. "Come on, let's go see what we can find out." He lead the way down to one of the labs spread across Titan Tower, leftovers from when the building had been his father's research lab which had carried over during various reconstructions of the tower and some put to good use by the cybernetic Titan. "Any preferences on where you want to start first?"

Kate shrugged. "Not really. I don't have that good an idea what you're looking for, so I can't really say."

"Thought you'd say something like that," Vic grinned, leading her to a machine near one of the room's corners. "Hop in," he directed, punching in a command which caused a glass enclosed cylinder (really, why ARE there so many of those in cartoons and anime anyway?) to open. Once Kate was inside, he began to explain. "This should provide a good test of your control over gravity. Ready?"

Kate nodded vigorously, some of Victor's excitement rubbing off on her. "Hit it!"

The cylinder closed and a pair of metal discs, one above her head and one under her feet, lit up. She felt the pull of gravity increase immediately, but since she'd half expected it she was braced for the added strain. "One and a half times normal gravity," Victor announced, easing the machine's power upwards slowly to give the girl time to adjust. "Any problems so far?" he asked. Kate smiled and tapped one foot lightly on the floor, sending her a foot or up off the pad where she held her position. Victor took that as an answer and took a look at the machine's display, wondering how she was staying aloft anyway, even as he increased the power.

Victor's question was answered by a three dimensional virtual display of the gravity effects inside the tube. "She's latched onto the ceiling and walls," he mused aloud. The machine, at double normal gravity, showed that Kate was still producing enough output to counteract its pull and then some. Looking up, he saw that the girl's grin had spread somewhat. Smirking, he doubled the power, setting the tube to four times normal gravity. Kate's grin slipped as she lowered in the tube before stopping just above the floor, then rising back to her previous position. "Still good?" Victor asked.

"Yeah. How far can it go?" Kate asked, already assuming that Victor planned to test and see just how much power she could take at one time rather than trying to see how long she could stand it for.

"Actually, I don't know," Victor shrugged. "You're the first person I've tested this on."

Kate laughed, though stopped when she felt herself slipping slightly from lack of concentration. "Oh, great. I'm doomed."

Narrowing his eyes in exaggerated menace, Victor decided to go for broke and upped the power quickly. Faster than Kate could adjust to, apparently, as her feet hit the floor at six times normal gravity, and she was on her hands and knees at eight. "I think that's it!" she called, starting to worry. If she was doing her math right, her weight at the moment _should_ be somewhere upwards of a quarter of a ton. It didn't feel like it though. She wasn't a pasty lump of girlflesh on the pad, so it couldn't be anywhere near there. Her thoughts were cut off abruptly, as abruptly as Victor cut the power to the machine. Unfortunately, Kate was still applying upwards pull towards the ceiling, and the results were predictable as she flew up and smashed back-first into the upper pad. The glass doors slid open and she literally fell out.

"Sorry about that. You ok?" Victor asked, helping her to her admittedly wobbly feet.

"I'm good. I feel like I just ran across the city and back... with you strapped to my back."

Victor grinned. "Was that a joke?"

"Maybe a small attempt at one," she said, sitting down and rubbing at her wrists and knees.

"Want to try for a duration test with that tomorrow?"

"Sure."

Vic nodded. "Alright. Come on, we've got a couple more we can run today," he said, leading her to another tortu—testing machine. "Think you can call up your sword?"

Kate held her arm out and a moment later, two of the bracelets adorning her wrists flashed and reappeared as the helix-sword, which she caught and held out for inspection. "What now?"

"Metalurgy tests, stress testing, and anything else I can think of to put it through," Vic answered.

"...Huh?"

Victor almost face-vaulted. Of course that would go right over her head, what had he been thinking? He tried it again, with smaller words. "I want to see what it's made of and what it can take."

"Oh. Ok."

After running the blade through a machine designed to do just what Victor said he wanted to do (and having the metalurgy analysis come back inconclusive), he positioned the blade in another device designed to make desired bends in metal plates Victor used for things like the T-Car. "Hope this doesn't break the sword," he muttered, starting the machine. Nothing happened. "Huh?" he asked, directing the machine to apply more pressure. Nothing continued to happen. (Points if anyone gets who and what I'm referencing, besides Douglass Adams.)

Glancing between Kate and the machine, Victor made up his mind. "Stand back, this could get ugly," he said, taking several careful steps back himself. Once they were at a safe distance, Vic ordered the machine to apply full pressure to the blade. The machine groaned in protest before something crunched and it shut down. "Er, sorry," Victor apologized quickly, thinking the blade broken and crushed to powder. Upon taking a closer inspection however, he found the weapon quite intact. He couldn't say the same for the machine however, as it now had a sword-shaped impression in some places. "Well, I'll be damned."

Taking her sword back, Kate looked sheepish. "Sorry," she apoligized, casually placing the blade tip on the floor and leaning on the hilt... causing the blade to bend easily. "What next?"

"Well, next," Victor said, turning to regard her. He paused when he noticed the sword. "How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" the girl asked, taking her weight off the sword and causing it to resume its normal shape.

"Never mind. What else can you do with it?" Victor asked, already leading Kate towards another section of the room. Seeing her shrug again, he picked up a short length of wood, put there for the occasion. "Think you can cut this without taking my arm with it?" The sword flashed out quickly... and the top half of the length of wood fell to the floor. Victor hadn't even felt the impact of the blade connecting with it. Adjusting his grip on the wood, Victor held it up again. "Hit it, but don't cut it this time."

Once more, the sword swung out and caught the piece of wood, putting a dent in it but not cutting through the surface, as though Kate had willed the blade's edge to dull on command. Taking a quick hold of the weapon in question, Victor's mechanical eye glowed more intensely for a moment as he observed the blade more closely. The edge was indeed dull, to the point that it wouldn't cut anything unless someone put enough force behind their swing to literally tear through whatever they were swinging at—break bones or cause bruises, sure, but not cut. As he watched though, it reverted back to its original keen edge. "Is that normal?" Kate asked, sensing Victor's slight astonishment.

"No, most swords don't do that," he replied, tossing down the piece of wood in favor of a steel pipe. "Now this."

Kate brought her sword to bear and the sound of metal-on-metal rang through the room for a moment... followed closely by the sound of metal-on-floor. "Neat. Got anything else?"

Victor nodded, pulling out another bar of metal. Unlike the last, however, this was a solid bar—not hollow. Also, it was made of the same high-grade material typically used in military applications... on tanks. "This is the last one, I think. You really shouldn't be able to get through this one."

Shrugging, Kate once more swung out the helix-sword, which slammed into the slab of armor with a resounding clang... but did not penetrate. Blinking, she glanced at her sword briefly before taking it in both hands. "Hold it out so I can use a downward strike," she instructed, as all of her previous blows had been horizontal and one-handed.

Switching his grip on the bar of metal, Victor took a step back and held his arms and the bar out level. "Go for it," he said, grinning. The sword came up, the back down... through the bar, between Victor's arms, and lodging itself firmly in the floor all without a sound. "...Insert Neo 'whoa' here," Vic mumbled, holding the neatly sliced pieces of armor apart.

"That kind of hurt my arms," Kate complained, giving up on removing the blade from the floor and simply calling it back to her in its bracelet form. "Hitting the floor, I mean."

Vic blinked before shaking his head and giving up on figuring the girl out. "Ok, just a few more tests."

* * *

Elsewhere and some time later... 

An older man sat hunched over a small worktable, a large work lamp illuminating whatever sat in front of him. After several moments of mumbling and tinkering with various tools, he leant back and let out a loud sigh of relief. One hand streched out and made contact with whatever he had been so focused on.

_Tik._

His hand paused for a beat, unsure whether or not it would work.

_Tik._

He lowered his hand back to his side, his fist clenching unconsciously. "It's finished." He stood, flicking a nearby light switch and illuminating the room. The man was old, tall and thin, with long hair that once had been black though now was mostly gray and as thin as the rest of him. He removed his thin t-shirt as he made his way across the room, revealing a large scar in the area of his heart. The shirt was tossed carelessly into a bin half-full of similarly dirty garments slated to be cleaned at some point.

Though he looked old and quite frail, he disproved this notion simply in the grace with which he moved around, shrugging on a t-shirt identicle to the first, followed by a fancy white long-sleeved button down dress shirt—the kind with stuff in the collar and cuffs that made the material seem stiff. The shirt was followed by and tucked into a pair of black slacks, followed by black dress socks and shoes polished to an almost absurd shine. Lastly, he donned a dress coat (also predictably black) and tie, black with a few white stripes.

Striding back to the table, he picked up the small finished product of his labors, staring into its polished frame, face, and hand... before pocketing it and taking one last look around the room before heading to the door. His hand on the knob, he paused. As an afterthought, he realized he had forgotten something. Another look around produced a short length of ribbon, which he used to tie back his hair. "For you, then?" he asked of the air. Hearing an answer only in his own mind, he nodded and stepped from the room.

* * *

Night had fallen in Jump City. Outside Titan Tower, the obstacle course had partially been converted for another use and several flood lights lit it to the point where the glow could be seen from farther ashore. Kate was once again in the midst of weapons training, though not the sort she was accustomed to. "Ok, now squeeze the trigger, don't pull," Victor instructed, still paired with Kate for the day. 

The obstacle course, now a firing range, erupted into noise as the rifle Kate had pressed firmly to her shoulder went off, kicking back and nearly unbalancing the girl with its recoil. "And now I see why we wear ear muffs," Kate murmured, calling back the target as Victor had shown her to see for herself how well she'd scored. The hole was nowhere near the center of the target. "High and to the right? But I had the sights..."

Victor pressed the control to send the target back out. "You pulled when you should have squeezed. Like I said, take it slow."

Taking a deep breath and bracing herself in preparation for the next shot, Kate began to take aim once more. "What do I get if I actually hit one of the rings?"

Vic grinned. "If Savior were here, he'd probably say something like 'a break,' but since I'm such a nice guy, I'll let you have next pick of which gun you want to get a feel for." Her only response was to pull the bolt action back and slam it back in, jacking another round into the chamber. "Don't miss," he taunted, though Kate probably didn't hear it through the ear muffs.

"I won't," she answered, having heard him after all. Closing one eye, she sighted through the scope and across the range. She began to ease her finger back slowly... And alarms lit up and blared across the course. Kate's shot went out to sea.

"The hell...?" Victor asked, but was cut off momentarily.

"All Titans assemble in the garage! I repeat, Titans assemble in the garage!" came Gar's voice from the speaker system across the island.

Victor immediately turned for the garage, but stopped when a mechanical whine caught his ear. He turned around and found Kate reeling in the target. "Hey, that means you too!" he called, waving her towards the tower.

Tossing one last disgusted look at the target, Kate threw it down and ran to catch up to Victor. "I knew that."

* * *

Inside the city, gunshots rang out as police attempted to get the crowd under control. Shotguns loaded with bean-bag rounds and rubber bullets, gas grenades, and mace-filled paintballs were fired into the mob with little to no effect. Officers with riot shields, tasers, and night sticks tried to keep the mob away from the most populated sections of town, but quickly became part of the all-consuming madness themselves. A mass wave of humanity carved a swath of destruction through the city, consuming everything in its path. 

Average citizens armed with anything they could pull up charged down armed officers in a zombified stupor, ignoring pain and the deaths of those they stampeded through. There was a method to the madness, however. Were one to view the mob from above as they ran from street to street, they would be able to make out the trail of destruction it had left behind, and from there guess where it intended to go next. And, in the midst of it all, was the man in the suit. He strode calmly through the chaos, his hands waving back and forth to a beat inside his head, conducting the madness. As he stepped over and around trampled bodies, one could almost swear that he was smiling...

He paused though as a burst of light parted the mob momentarily. There, above the crowd, a small pair of glowing green orbs floated. Below them, a second and far larger pair burst into being, illuminating the figure and those below her that stood between him and his goal. His smile broadened. They were saying something, but he didn't care. Really, only one word mattered at the moment. "Onward."

* * *

"What's the situation?" Cyborg asked, already in the T-Car, along with Gauntlet and Medley. It was a tight fit, but since Beast Boy and Terra were fairly small anyway, they managed to cram into the back seat with Medley without too much trouble. 

"There's been some kind of riot. Not sure on the details," BB answered, strapping in as the car shot out of the garage and onto the bridge... then lifted off into the air.

Gauntlet turned around in his seat, not bothering with a seat belt. "Sounds like fun. You sure they're not just celebrating New Years early?"

"Dope," Terra commented, slapping the back of Gauntlet's head. "Yeah, we're pretty sure. The others are already there, but they want the whole team on the scene. Robin said it's huge."

"So what are we looking for, exactly?" Medley asked, her face pressed against the window in an effort to see down to the streets.

BB began ticking off points on his fingers. "Very large groups of people wielding torches and pitchforks, fires, death, and a trail of destruction a mile long."

"Or we could just follow the signal from their communicators," Cyborg said, turning an eye to his instrument panel to do just that.

"That works too," Beast Boy conceded.

After a moment, Gauntlet rolled down his window and pointed out into the city. "You mean a trail like that one?"

Cyborg surveyed the crowd below as he came around for a landing. Finally, he decided to park on a nearby roof rather than risk endangering his baby in a street landing. The team was notorious for wrecking vehicles, and he damn sure wasn't gonna let that happen to HIS pride and joy if he had anything to say about it. Once he was sure the T-Car was safe, Cyborg ordered everyone out and locked the doors. "Can we get a ride?" he asked of Terra.

"Not a problem," the blonde geokinetic said, calling up a couple of large slabs of the street below for those that couldn't fly to ride on. "Which way?"

Glancing at his wrist and the screen embedded there, Cyborg pointed. "Thatta way." The boulders carrying the Titans, minus Beast Boy as he'd flown ahead, descended nearer to ground level and sped towards the location Cyborg indicated, occasionally turning as his directions changed. Nearly on top of the other Titans' signal, Cy's cybernetic eye picked up something the others couldn't. Though the sound of shots was lost among the racket of the crowd, he managed to pick out a group of police officers cornered against the side of a building. "Terra, take Medley on ahead and join up with the main group and have them send someone back this way to back us up. Gauntlet, you're with me. Let's try to keep the bone breaking to a minimum—I can see the lawsuits coming from here," Cyborg said, groaning that last part. "And Terra," he paused long enough to toss the girl a grin. "Try not to smoosh anyone."

"Try to save some of whoever is leading this mess for me, would you?" Gauntlet said, before jumping off the boulder after Cyborg with a yell of, "BANZAI!"

Rolling her eyes at Rob's antics, Terra continued in the direction Cyborg had indicated, occasionally glancing at her passenger to gauge the other girl's reaction to all this. Not counting her encounter with Mortimer in chapter one, and also not counting the fight with Charaxes as that had been more than a little one-sided and one could barely call it a 'fight,' this was Medley's first real experience with battle. Wanting to break the silence, Terra asked the first thing that came to mind. "How are you holding up?" ...No one said it would be the most original question ever, and she wanted to kick herself immediately after for asking.

Medley thought about the question a moment before answering. "I can't say, really. I haven't actually _done_ anything yet."

"Oh, you will. Trust me," Terra affirmed, finally spotting her teammates. "There they are!"

What she hadn't expected was several members of Jump City's finest actually firing on said teammates. "This doesn't look good," she murmured before calling on her powers. The ground surrounding the Titans shook a bit before breaking up in waves, sending everyone around them off their feet for several yards. As she continued to lower the boulder she and Medley were riding upon, Terra nearly took a bullet herself for her trouble. Shaking off the near miss, Terra did what she did best. "How about we shake things up a bit?" she yelled, yanking up more and more of the street around the Titans, some coming up in shield walls and other parts forming large chunks of ammunition best suited for thrashing tanks.

Medley spotted her chance to rejoin the main group of Titans and pass along Cyborg's message, as she'd been told. "Thanks for the ride," she called out to Terra before hopping off the rock platform... and from one chunk of floating asphalt to the next before Terra could break them down into smaller parts better suited to hitting humans than making greasy smears of them. She hit the ground on the outskirts of the group, just inside Terra's rock walls, where they were taking a moment to regroup and reassess the situation.

"Where are Cy and Gauntlet, I thouht they were with you guys? And did you see Star on the way in?" Beast Boy asked as soon as Medley was close enough to hear.

"No sign of Starfire, sorry. The guys stopped to help some of the police back there," she said, pointing back the way they'd come. "About four blocks back or so. Cyborg said they need someone to come back them up, too."

"Shit. Ok then. We'll try to work our way back up to the main group," Savior said by way of volunteering himself.

Robin nodded. "And we'll try to find the head of this thing and cut it off before it causes much more trouble. Since they're all going pretty much the same direction, it shouldn't be too hard to find us. I'm hoping we'll run into Star along the way," Once Savior was up and over the crowd and Terra had joined the group, Robin reissued his orders for those who hadn't heard them the first time, and though they were common sense, it wouldn't hurt to reiterate. "I'm not going to say to take it easy on them—there are simply too damn many people and not enough of us. Stay close to each other and don't let them catch us in the classic zombie swarm attack."

That said, Robin signaled to Terra to let down the bowl-like depression she'd put them in before swinging his staff and taking the lead as the group attempted to charge through the crowd and find the front of it. Robin, Beast Boy, and Scalpel led the way, followed closely by Raven, Terra, and Medley. Staff and glaive swung out, knocking people aside so the group could pass. Beast Boy, in the form of a giant squid, picked up several of their attackers and flung them away... but this lasted only the ten seconds required for one of the maddened pedestrians to attempt to ram a broken bottle into one of BB's tentacles. From there, he decided it's be better to risk close range combat as a gorilla than risk having broken glass jammed into some random body part.

At the rear of the group, Raven was using telekinetic bolts to hurl away would-be attackers while Terra pulled, pushed, or ripped the ground from beneath the feet of those following them and Medley attempted to deal with anyone who made it past the other two girls with a mixture of hand-to-hand and sword techniques. To Terra's amusement, several of the mob had decided the shredded ground she was leaving in their group's wake was too good a source of ammunition to pass up and had begun hurling chunks of it in their direction. Causing the rocks to reverse course midair or explode into dust before they could be thrown dissuaded a few from using that tactic, but more were coming and most just ignored it.

Raven blasted another attacker away before narrowing her eyes and drawing on her powers. A combination of magiac and telekinetic energy flooded out into the crowd as she attempted to send as many as she could into unconsciousness. Her efforts to do so were repelled just as they had been the first time she'd tried that technique. She had hoped that the strain of controlling so many people would cause whoever was in command to falter a bit, but that wasn't the case apparently. In short, the only real way to knock their attackers out was the old fashioned way. Sure, Savior could probably mind-jack a few individuals and force them to shut down, but it was too risky to do so in the middle of a battle and FAR too risky to attempt it when they were outnumbered a thousand to one. The sound of the flat part of a sword blade slamming into someone's skull dangerously close to her own head drew Raven's attention back to the here and now. She took a moment to check for cranial dents or cracks in Medley's latest victim and found none. "Be more careful!" Raven called a warning to the other girl, not wanting her to accidently open someone's head like a mellon.

"Right," Medley called back, stepping inside one of their attacker's defenses and hammering him with a trio of punches and jabs with the handle of her sword, before bringing the handle up and cracking it against the side of the man's skull. He staggered, but did not go down. A swift kick to the groin area remedied that problem, and Medley continued on about her business. Three more of the mob took the fallen man's place, rushing the Titans with an assortment of weapons ranging from a chair leg to a tire iron. A telekinetic blast from Raven shoved a chain wielding woman away, while her sword disappeared and Medley pushed off and took to the air briefly before reversing direction and using the added height to build momentum, which she spent by splitting her attacks between the remaing two, both of whom were men. The first caught a spin kick to the chest, throwing him to the ground. A quick midair twist before her feet hit the ground again put Medley in position to shift her weight into a variant of the U-punch, a backhand and palm-strike to the other assailant's nose and solar-plexus, putting him down as well.

Back in the front of the group, Robin swung out his staff and tripped yet another random person off the street turned lunatic. He followed the sweep up with a jab to the man's forhead, causing the back of his head to hit the street and send him into blissful slumber the old fashioned way. Almost as though it had a mind of its own, the staff immediately reversed course, catching a woman in the stomach as she attempted to jump on his back. He twisted the staff and used it to throw her into several more oncoming attackers, knocking them all from their feet.

Beside Robin, in the center of their little delta formation (or at the top point of a hexagon, were the others taking up the other points) Beast Boy slammed yet another in a long line of faceless attackers to the ground, monkey-stomping him for good measure... or gorilla-stomping, rather. Another person swung out with an actual baseball bat, catching Beast Boy in the chest. He paused for a moment before grabbing the bat and giving it a shove, sending the person at the other end flying. A second later, a sign post came flying down towards the changeling's head, but was caught in a gorilla fist. After shaking off the person at the other end, Beast Boy regarded his newfound toys for a moment before putting them into action, swinging first one and then the other into the crowd and sending waves of people flying this way and that. Hopefully, he wasn't breaking ribs or something, but at that point he cared more about keeping himself and his teammates alive than giving random attackers 'owwies.' "Argh! GO AWAY!"

On the left front side of their group, Scalpel swung his glaive around in much the same way Robin was using his staff, Beast Boy his clubs, and Medley her sword. The flat of his blade found any appendage it could strike, sending people sprawling back into the street and away from their group. After one such swing, another attacker who had been further off to the side jumped in, swinging her fists and screaming at the alien. One of Scalpel's clawed feet came up and caught her in the sternum, throwing her back into the crowd. He quickly rethought that move though when several more people rushed him the moment he'd gotten his leg up. He'd seen tactics similar to those before: wait for the enemy to bring their weapon to bear, then rush headlong and hope you pull it from his hands before he has a chance to stab you or any of your comrades with it, or just impale someone on it so they were left weaponless... but those were tactics more common in an actual battlefield, not something humans off the street would volunteer to do. Blacktrinians, maybe—they had a certain resiliance against bladed weapons, after all. Humans? Not so much, no. His thoughts came back to the fore though as he ducked another swing and brought his glaive back into play.

Meanwhile, the other splinter group of Titans was having a hard time of their own...

A sonic cannon blast parted the crowd long enough for Savior to join Cyborg and Gauntlet, along with the rest of the Jump City Police Department that hadn't succomed to whatever was controlling the rest of the crowd. The moment Savior was with the group, the police and Cyborg opened fire with what few rubber bullets and gas grenades they had left, or just the very few Cy had thought to bring along. He'd expected to be dealing with something a little more resiliant than a mob of normal people, like a mob of Slade drones, or a mob of walking corpses, or a mob of jello-men from Mars... "How many?" Cyborg yelled to Savior over the commotion.

"Too many to count!" replied the white-garbed teen, lashing out with the Shimmer and sending back anyone who came too close. "Close to a quarter of the city's population I'd say, give or take the rest."

"Just our luck! Damn, now why didn't _I_ think to pack our crowd-control kit!" Gauntlet yelled, bashing several people with gauntlet energy in the form of boxxing gloves.

Pausing mid sonic cannon blast, Cyborg glanced between Savior and Gauntlet. "Actually, if you can buy me some time, I might have something in the car. It's not far from here."

"Me and my big mouth," Gauntlet groaned, but started providing cover fire none the less. "Sure Rob, let's mention the anti-mob kit in the back of the T-Car and send our tanker off to fetch it, huh? BRILLIANT!"

"FETCH! What do I look like, your maid?" Cyborg yelled, sending another sonic cannon blast into the crowd.

Gauntlet paused in his cover fire and turned to regard Cyborg. "Well... would French work? I'm sure I could find something left over from a few Halloweens back."

Narrowing his eyes, Cyborg shifted his arm so it pointed at Gauntlet's head. The blast flew past the grinning teen's head and slammed into someone who'd been trying to get the drop on him. "Oh, when I get back, you and I are HAVING WORDS!"

"KNOCK IT OFF you two, or you'll BOTH be wearing the maid's outfit!" Savior yelled.

"HE STARTED IT!" the pair yelled, pointing at each other. A second later, after taking a moment to digest the mental imagry provided, they cracked an identical pair of grins.

"Or maybe you'll be wearing it," Gauntlet tossed at Savior.

"I'd pay to see that. We could charge admission," Cy added, casually backhanding someone away from the group.

"Just go get the damned kit, PLEASE," Savior growled.

Nodding, Cyborg activated his grapping cannon. "Sure thing. Anything else?"

"A cold beer, a hot pizza, and something cool from the video store if you don't mind," Gauntlet suggested idly.

Firing off the grapple, Cyborg tested the anchor a moment before answering. "All right. How about a side of 'kiss my ass' to go with that?" he asked, taking off for the roof.

"CHEATER!" Gauntlet called after him.

Slamming the Shimmer into yet another assailant who had snuck up behind Rob, Savior threw a glare the teen's way. "Gauntlet, pay attention!"

"Aye aye, cap'n!"

* * *

And elsewhere... 

The old man marched on, conducting the madness with the efficiency of one who has led processions of the damned for centuries... or maybe just that of someone who knows exaclty what they are doing. His hands rose and fell in time with the beat, slowing occasionally as the melody called for, but never stopping. They were close now, he could feel it. And there, still in his path but cut off from her friends, the orange skinned girl with the green eyes. She was proving more difficult to dissuade than he had first assumed. No matter. Eventually, she would tire and fall. The march would go on.

* * *

Starfire, for all her strength and skill was cut off, alone, and just a little out of her league here... and she knew it. Eventually, despite her best efforts to the contrary, the crowd would overwhealm her if backup did not arrive soon. And once more, the crowd swarmed. Eyes and hands glowing, she lifted off the ground slightly and held her hands striaght out to either side before going into a fast spin. Just before the crowd hit, she released the attack she'd been preparing—a concussive wave that spread outwards, throwing back those around her. Following the wave, a multitude of small starbolts flew into the crowd, further cutting into their ranks. 

The starbolts stopped and Starfire touched back down, her head reeling slightly but regaining her senses quickly. She saw him then, through a break in the crowd—the madman she had first spotted at the beginning of this battle. He stood there, hands flowing back and forth smoothly, unaffected by the insanity around him. He was waving something around in his right hand, but she couldn't make it out from this distance. That wouldn't be a problem for much longer though, as she attempted to take to the air and make a dive.

Unfortunately for Starfire, the conductor had indeed seen her. At some unseen bob or wave from whatever it was he held, the crowd's fury seemed to double and they charged the girl in a frothing mass, taking hold of her legs just before she could get airborne and dragging her back to earth with their sheer numbers. Once down, they commenced the beating—kicking, stomping, punching, clawing, biting, anything to get the job done.

Starfire began to rethink her decision to pull her punches.

* * *

Savior and Gauntlet, despite their differences, proved to be an effective pairing against the sheer numbers present. Gauntlet energy battering rams, flyswatters, and any other blunt object the boy could think of flew into the crowd, scattering their ranks... only to have them get right back up, or just be replaced by more. Shimmer strands flew here and there as Savior worked his talent into a controlled flurry of blows, disarming an assailant here, knocking one down there, entangling and throwing three back into the crowd there. 

And then the crowd made a mass swarm, driving back the two Titans and their police escort... until, with a cry of "BOOYAH!" from above, several concussion grenades and sonic cannon blasts parted the crowd. Cyborg impacted heavily with the ground, driving two size-twelve or so foot-shaped indentions into the asphalt. "Miss me?"

"Only a little!" Gauntlet yelled, smashing back more of the crowd.

Savior paused in doing likewise, turning to Cyborg long enough to ask, "Which way are the others?"

Taking a glance at his arm, Cyborg pointed down the street. "They've moved up since, but it's almost a straight shot to their position."

Savior nodded, turning back to the crowd and leading off with several Shimmer attacks. "Gauntlet, cover our rear. Cy, you're with me. Let's go!"

Cyborg followed Savior closely, letting loose with maching gun and sonic cannon fire, as he'd been able to fully replace his arsenal with non-lethals. Putting the police between the lead Titans and himself, Gauntlet threw up a shield behind them and followed, occasionally shooting out rams of gauntlet energy from the shield, or using the shield itself to push the crowd back. They were on the move.

* * *

The crowd was thick ahead, thicker than it had been before. Even so, Robin, Scalpel, and Beast Boy drove into it, followed closely by Medley, Raven, and Terra. An explosion of green energy from directly ahead cleared the crowd somewhat, and the Titans took that opportunity rush through the crowd and reunite with Starfire. 

"You ok?" Robin asked, taking in Star's bedraggled appearance. Her outfit, what there was of it to begin with, was torn in places and several cuts and bruises covered her arms and legs. In short, she looked like hell warmed over.

"I will be," she assured him, catching her breath. "I am afraid I have lost sight of the mastermind controlling the crowd."

"I don't think we have to worry about that much," said Raven, gesturing towards the nearby buildings. The crowd was dispersing somewhat as the majority of them had bashed their way into several of the buildings and were making their way inside. "He's bound to be in one of them."

Taking a quick count and assessing the risks, Robin came up with the only plan that seemed likely to work. "Ok, we split up. FIND him. Try not to engage the mob any more than necessary. Once you find whoever is leading this mess, signal the team and we'll catch up. BB, Terra, take that building. Raven and Scalpel, you're on that one. Star and Medley, you've got that one," he said, pointing three of the buildings out and already eyeing the office building he had in mind.

"You sure you'll be ok alone, Fearless?" BB asked, though he knew he didn't need to. Once Robin set his mind on something, he carried through with it.

Robin took a quick inventory of his gear before nodding. "I'm good. Titans, go!"

As the other Titans split off to search through the buildings, Medley took the time to take a good look at theirs. 'VANCOUVER,' a sign over the shattered front doors proclaimed. "How do we go about doing this?" she asked of the far more experienced Starfire.

Starfire thought it over a moment, weighing their options. On the one hand, they should probably stick together as Medley was new to this and they were facing superior numbers. On the other hand, things would go much faster if they split up. Robin _had_ said not to engage the crowd unless absolutely necessary, and she didn't think Medley would go out of her way to find a fight when she could and had been ordered to avoid one. "Can you make it to the top of the building?" Seeing the other girl nod, she made her decision. "Then I shall start the search from the bottom and work my way up. Make your way up to the top and start searching downwards," she said, risking fighting up through the crowd herself.

"Gotcha," Medley nodded, starting towards the side of the building. "Hey wait, what do I do if I find whoever's in charge?" she asked just before Star made it inside the building.

"Signal the team and wait. If one of us gives the signal, break off from your search and try to join up," said Star, hovering the rest of the way into the building after she received an affermative from Medley.

* * *

The splinter group of Titans, along with police officers, stopped suddenly. The crowd thinned, parted, and dispersed altogether... ignoring them completely. "What the hell?" Gauntlet muttered, echoing everyone's thoughts. 

Raising his arm, Cyborg checked his built in communicator. "I'm tracking the others... looks like they've split up and are searching through some of the buildings ahead."

Pulling out his own communicator, Savior attempted to raise their leader. "Robin, come in."

The screen came to life with a view of the Teen Wonder... floating in midair, or hanging rather, as Savior had apparently caught him in the middle of scaling a building. "Robin here. Did you find the others?"

"They're here with me," Savior confirmed. "Starfire?"

"Found her a few minutes ago. We decided to split up and search the surrounding buildings. They've smashed their way into at least a dozen, so it could take a while."

"Roger that. We'll begin searching as soon as we catch up."

Robin nodded and the background behind him began falling away. "Ok, signal if you find anything. Robin out," he said, cutting the transmission.

Putting away his communicator, Savior glanced between Cyborg and Gauntlet before addressing the few officers still with them. "We're going on ahead. You should find some cover and call for reinforcements."

"We WERE the reinforcements," one of them said, shaking his head. Whatever the hell was going on, it had unsettled him and his fellow officers.

"Ok then, just find somewhere to lay low until this blows over."

The officer that had spoken before, apparently the one in charge, had other ideas. "Oh hell no. We may be just normal people, but we're not going to just sit still while we could be helping."

"Fine," Savior conceded, turning to Gauntlet. "Go with them."

"What, me?" Gauntlet asked. "Why not Cyborg?"

Savior rolled his eyes. "Because, despite the fact that Cy just rearmed, he's bound to run out of ammo again eventually, and when that happens it's down to the sonic cannon and his fists. And while this has worked before, it would be more of a hinderance when dealing with a crowd of normal people under the influence of some lunatic."

"Great," Gauntlet groaned, but headed off in the direction the police had already took off in.

"Guess you know what this means, Cy?"

"Yeah," the mechanical Titan answered. "I really hate stairs. Rock, paper, scissors you for it?"

* * *

Robin ascended quickly, his eyes scanning through the glass of the office building's windows to judge just how far along the crowd had come. They hadn't gotten into the upper floors yet, which was good. That made his job a bit easier. He pulled himself onto the roof and was startled to find someone already up there. His hand paused on its way to his birdarangs though when he realized the person there was ignoring him for the most part. It appeared to be a woman in her late twenties to early thirties, with short dark hair (he couldn't judge the color as the lighting was poor), and a pair of binoculars pressed to her face. 

"What are you doing up here?" he asked, glancing the way she was looking before turning his eyes back to her.

Sweeping her glasses across the city, she stopped them when something else caught her eyes. "Watching the action."

"You know they'll be up here in about five minutes, right?" Robin asked, referring to the crowd below.

"Yup," the woman nodded, her voice unconcerned.

Robin's eyes narrowed. Something was just off about this woman, but he couldn't put his finger on quite what. "You're not concerned in the least, are you?"

The woman lowered her binoculars and turned to regard the Teen Wonder fully, giving him a good look at the equipment she wore along with her coat (and a good idea of the small arsenal contained within), and the medium length sword strapped to her side. "Not really, no." Seeing his hand once more inching towards his utility belt, the woman grinned. "Relax, I'm just here for the scenery. If I were a threat, I'd have cut your grapple when you stopped halfway up. I have no intentions of involving myself in this, whatsoever."

Robin's hands lowered slightly, but he didn't let his guard down. "I see. You wouldn't happen to know where the leader of this mess is, would you?"

The woman smiled, putting her binoculars back to her eyes and turning back to the city. "Your princess is in another castle."

"Huh?" Robin asked, but was cut off by the emergency alarm sounding over his T-Comm. A second later, a flash of orange light and the sound of an explosion came from nearby.

The woman's head jerked back before the binoculars locked onto something. "SHIT! Looks like one of yours just got themselves blown out of a building!"

"That seems to happen a lot," Robin called, running to the edge of the building and jumping off, his grapple already in hand.

"Good luck," the woman murmured after him, still watching the action.

* * *

After Starfire entered the building, Medley turned her head towards the top of it before tapping into her power and jumping. Once her feet made contact with the building's wall, she continued up it at a run. Her thoughts began to wander as her eyes scanned the inside of the building occasionally. This all seemed much easier than it had the first time she'd tried it. Really, everything was slowly getting easier to do. She was using less and less power than before to maintain effects like running or hopping up the sides of buildings. Had she focused more on the question, she'd have realized that the answer was obvious: with practice came skill. 

Her thoughts once more returned to the present as she neared the top. A quick scan of the roof provided only a view of an antennae of sorts attached to the top and a door leading up from inside the building. She reversed course and walked back down the side of the building. Deciding this was as good a place to start as any, she summoned her sword and drove it into the safety glass that made up the windows surrounding the top floor. After cutting a hole wide enough to fit through, the kicked the glass circle inwards and jumped/fell (though mostly stumbled) in.

She regained her feet quickly and took a quick survey of her surroundings. The entire floor seemed to be some sort of combination between observation deck and library, as it was littered with desks, shelves full of books, chairs, and other such things. Ignoring the shelves and such, she found the elevator doors, along with two sets of doors leading to stairs. One led up to the roof and the other went back down into the building. The light above the elevators lit, drawing her attention. The door opened with a soft _ding_. A man stepped from the elevator, his long hair flowing wildly around his head—apparently it had come loose from its tie at some point. Upon noticing the girl, he paused.

"How did you get up here?" he asked, not reconizing the girl for what she was. And why should he? The media had shown pretty much all of the Titans at some point or another, but since she was new, they hadn't gotten a look at Medley yet. Besides, this building was supposed to be completely empty due to the buyout.

"I ran," answered the girl. "And you?"

"Took the elevator," he smiled, stepping further into the room. "May I ask your name?"

She nodded, assuming him to be a pedestrian who had somehow avoided becoming one of the mob. Why shouldn't she? He certainly looked the part. "Medley. And yours?" she answered. The man's smile wavered and suddenly, Medley's senses went on alert. Her sixth sense was screaming that something about him just wasn't _right_, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

The old man sighed, folding his hands behind his back and stepping closer. He closed the distance of half the room before stopping to take in a better look at her. Finally, he spoke. "You remind me of her," he said quietly, his voice carrying with it the weight of loss.

"Who?" she asked, taking a half-step back.

"You can call me... Metronome," he answered. A pair of clicks sounded from behind his back and his hands came forward, bringing with them a pair of spheres, which he let go of so as so send them rolling towards the girl.

The danger she was in didn't immediately register with Medley, as the spheres closed the distance to her position. Then it hit like a punch to the gut. _'GRENADES! Where did he get grenades?'_ her mind screamed. Reflexes kicked in far, far too late and she dove for the window. The explosives went off, and though most of their shrapnel was absorbed by the furniture, some wasn't. The concussion propelled the girl into the windows and she struck just below where she'd entered, tearing through the safety glass with a crunch and taking the rest of the window with her.

In answer to her question, Metronome had attained the pair of grenades from one of the police officers under his command, thinking they were simply flash-bang grenades. He had been mistaken. Oh well, there was nothing he could do about that now. A pity, really. She had reminded him of...

The wind picked up as Kate's downward speed increased, little pieces of glass tinking in the light cast by street lights below and office lights to the sides. Her eyes opened slowly, and for a moment she forgot where she was. Her eyes focused on the closest thing. The glass, so much like the stars that couldn't be seen from inside the city limits, twinkled brightly and drew her eyes. Realization dawned though as she caught sight of the building falling away near her. Focusing on the building, she attempted to pull herself towards it and slow her fall. ...Nothing. It seemed that either she was too far away or the blast had knocked out her powers. Her eyes closed again and she sighed in frustration, but only for a moment. _'Try HARDER,'_ she thought, her mind making itself up. When they opened again, Medley called once more on her power, stretching it to its limits. She was close to the ground, and getting closer. Not close enough, however, to slow her fall signifigantly. There was something else though, something approaching...

Robin's hand snagged Medley's, the Teen Wonder having barely caught up in time. "You should really stop hanging around Savior!" he yelled, letting the line out on his grappling gun and lowering them to the ground. Once there, he set her down and assesed her injuries. "You ok?"

Medley nodded as Robin's fingers prodded at a gash on her forehead. It was bleeding like crazy, had already matted part of her hair down, and was starting to flow towards her eye. "I'm fine. He's up there!" she pointed upwards. "Top floor, heading for the roof!"

"Can you stand?"

Medley nodded. "I think," she said, taking his proferred hand and getting to shaky feet. "I think the uniform took most of the blast," she mumbled, looking herself over. Her jacket and pants did indeed seem to have taken most of the flack thrown her way, save for the piece of shrapnel that'd grazed her forehead. It did little for the ringing in her ears however.

Robin pulled a quick-sealing bandage from his utility belt, ripped it open, and pressed it to her cut. After a couple of seconds, he released the pressure and the bandage held. "The others should be coming, stay here until then," he said, once more pulling out his grappling gun and firing it at the roof. Once he had a good hold, Robin started to ascend... but was stopped when a couch came flying out a window, followed shortly by one of the mob, who latched onto his grappling line. Lowering himself back down the line, Robin dropped to the ground and turned to Medley. "Change of plans. Looks like we're going in through the bottom. Come on!"

The two rushed into the building, Robin running to the elevators. After a quick check, he shook his head. "They're out of comission. He didn't have any more of those grenades on him, did he?"

Medley shrugged. "I don't know. I only saw the two he threw at me."

"What's he look like?" Robin asked, not yet ready to open the door to the stairs.

"Normal," Medley said, a hand straying to her head as her cut throbbed painfully. "He just looks like a normal guy. I didn't suspect a thing until it was too late."

"Anything less vague and more useful than 'normal?'"

Thinking back, the girl nodded. "Yeah, he's dressed in some kind of fancy looking suit. Nothing like a metahuman would wear... just something like someone important would wear."

"Business suit?" Robin asked, slowly opening the door to the stairs.

"Kind of like that, but not quite."

Peeking through a small crack he'd opened between the door and the wall, Robin scanned the bottom of the stairwell and deemed it safe to enter, stepping the rest of the way in. "A tuxedo?"

"Bless you?" Medley asked, following the Boy Wonder.

"No, it's a type of suit..." Robin clarified, trailing off as a noise caught his attention. His eyes turned upwards and he had to supress a groan. The mob was on the stairs, less than four floors above them and stretching all the way to the top. "Crap," he muttered. "If they're going to try jumping onto my line again, then this way is blocked too."

Her gaze following Robin's, Medley narrowed her eyes in thought as she took in the layout of the stairwell. "Maybe not," she murmured, briefly tapping into her power to make sure it was functioning properly. "I think I could get us up there..." she started, but was cut off by a blast of green light far above and the distant sound of someone breaking through a wall, though in actuality it was the ceiling, as proven by the small shower of debris from above.

"Starfire," Robin answered the unspoken question. "Are you sure?"

"No, but I plan to try anyway."

"Good. So how do you want to do it?" Robin asked.

Medley shrugged. "I _could_ carry you, but I'm scared I'd drop you and if you used the grapple, we'd be back to square one with people jumping from..." she paused, eyes going to Robin's utility belt. "The grapple!"

Roughly a minute later, Robin and Medley stood back to back, several feet of line from Robin's grapple looping them together. "Ready?" Robin asked, taking out a birdarang and getting ready to cut the grapple line the moment they were clear of the top.

"Yep!" Medley answered, tapping into her power and...going nowhere. "Wait! We're kind of off balance... umm... You're going to have to help. I'll push us one way if you can push off from the other."

Robin nodded, though he knew she wouldn't see it. "Gotcha. Let's go!"

Once more, Medley tapped into her power. This time though, she sent them flying up into the stairwell. As she'd predicted, her trajectory was off, sending them up and back, from her point of view. The moment they neared the stairs, Robin pulled up his feet and used them to push back and up, sending them further upwards. Unfortunately, since neither of them could really see where the other was going, they came up short when Medley neared the next stairwell. Hands stretched out from the crowd on the stairs and she almost lost her hold on them, but she regained her control at the last minute. Thinking quickly, she called the sword and rammed it into the stairs above her as she neared, then used it up pull herself and Robin up before kicking off again. "Let's try not to do that again!" she called to her passenger.

"You don't have any room to complain, you overshot the mark!" Robin called as they plowed over the stair railing and into several of the crowd. Much as Medley had with her sword, Robin pulled out his staff and slammed it into the wall behind the crowd, sending them up again. "Just keep it up!"

After five floors of this, the pair worked into a steady rhythm, quickly working their way through the building. Nearly at the top, Medley looked up and briefly weighed their options for getting to the roof before coming to the obvious conclusion. "I'm going to try to put us up through Starfire's hole, get ready!"

A second later, the pair burst up through the opening and onto the roof, Robin reaching back with a Birdarang and cutting the line holding the two together. They landed on opposite sides of the hole, collecting themselves and turning to face Metronome. He stood calmly watching them, his baton hand still idly controlling the madness around and below them. And there, hovering mere feet before the madman, was the alien girl who had been seperated from the other Titans at the start of this conflict. "I see you found your way back up," he said, nodding towards Medley, who frowned and gripped her sword tighter.

"Star... what have you done to her?" Robin asked of the old man, seeing that the girl hadn't so much as acknowleged their presence. He already knew though. He knew coming up the stairwell. If Star were in her right mind, this would have been over the moment she shot through to the roof. No, at the moment, he was trying to decide whether to use his drawn Birdarang to break the baton or to just put it in the guy's temple.

The old man smiled and a stray flick of the baton caused Star to turn in midair. "I have business here. I'm afraid I'm going to have to have your friend escort you back down." Turning around towards the large antennae on the other side of the roof, he idly flicked the baton again, sending Star flying towards her companions.

"MOVE!" Robin yelled, dodging to the side as the alien girl blasted past. She stopped and turned around, pulling back her fist and flying straight for the sword-weilding girl who stood there, jaw slightly agape, frozen in place. At the last second, a flying tackle from Robin brought her to the ground and clear of the alien marionette. Robin rolled to his feet again, leaving Kate where she lie. Star came around again and Robin dodged, but it seemed his luck had run out for the moment, as Star lashed out with a leg and caught him in the stomach, sending Robin spinning off towards the edge of the building. She followed it up with a flying punch, catching Tim midair and knocking him senseless.

For a moment, Metronome's control over the alien girl wavered and Starfire came to her senses. Shaking her head in confusion, she caught sight of Robin flying over the side of the building. Well-honed instincts kicked in and she went after him, snagging him around the utility belt and leaving them suspended several feet out from the edge with several stories of empty air and unforgiving ground below. Metronome spared a backwards glance at the girl before narrowing his eyes and resuming his control over her at the cost of a loss of control over much of the crowd he was currently holding sway over. As people in the madness came to their senses, he realized that this battle was beginning to wear him down and he needed to hury along. "Drop him," he muttered, turning back to the tower and beginning to climb the service ladder there.

Kory's body shook momentarily as she again fought for control, but her hand opened, sending an unconscious Tim into open air. And back on the roof, Kate collected her senses and sat up in time to watch one Titan drop the other. Her mind reeling with questions, Kate stood. Why was this happening, why had Starfire attacked them, where were the others, why wasn't Kory going after Tim, why wasn't SHE doing something, why why WHY... Medley snapped out of it, all thoughts wiped from her mind as she dashed to the end of the roof, stepped off, and ran down it, augmenting gravity's natural pull to increase her speed and catch up with the falling Teen Wonder. Questions about how exactly she planned to pull this off, or why she hadn't fallen over from overusing her powers yet didn't cross her mind as she flung herself into the space between buildings, catching Robin in a flying tackle midway through. Nearly to the other side, she realized two things. The first was that she was going far too fast for a soft landing and the second was that said landing would probably hurt. Tapping into her power again, she realized one more thing: she'd hit the bottom of the bucket.

Up on the roof, Metronome gained the top of the radio antennae and stood atop the small platform there, looking out over the city. Below him, the shadows stirred and opened, depositing seven of the Titans, each prepared for the worst. Apparrently, Raven had begun gathering the team the moment the emergency signal went out. As the Titans took stock of the situation, they caught sight of Metronome atop the antennae and Starfire hovering off the side of the building. At some unseen signal from Metronome, Starfire turned and flew towards her friends. The Titans scattered, half splitting off to hold Starfire at bay, the other half going after Metronome.

Atop the tower, the old man reached into his coat and pulled out the device he'd put together just a few hours ago—a small device with a single hand: his namesake. He held it aloft and the hand moved by itself. Amplified by the tower, its power spread across the city nearly instantly, causing everyone to pause in what they were doing... only to resume it a moment later as if nothing had happened. And back on the roof, Scalpel landed hard below the tower, glaive in hand and small pieces of debris raining down around him. He'd been in mid-swing when the metronome had activated and forward momentum had allowed him to shatter the device.

And elsewhere, a few moments earlier... the woman atop one of the neighboring buildings watched through her binoculars as Medley ran over the edge of the Vancouver building and down its side before throwing herself off of it and intercepting Robin mid-fall. Below, Medley flew uncontrollably towards the opposite building's glass-mirrored walls, bracing herself for impact and hoping she didn't drop Robin in the process. Almost there, a flash of light and something in her hand alerted her to fact that her sword had just materialized in-hand without being called. Turning back towards the building fast approaching, it didn't take a genius to figure out what the being inside of her had in mind. Medley shifted slightly and rammed the helix-sword into the glass wall on impact. Momentum and gravity took hold and they fell groundward, the sword leaving a line of broken glass and severed steel in its wake as it slowed their descent.

Robin stirred, opening his eyes to his surroundings. Pressure indicative of an arm around his waist: check. Ground rushing up from below, but not as fast as it should be: check. Loud scraping noise and a female yell/scream coming from above: check. Ground slamming into him and whoever had ahold of him: BIG check. Robin groaned a bit, turning to regard Medley beside him. "Nice save," he said, not mentioning that she could have been just a little quicker with it.

"Thanks," the girl panted, shaking bits of broken glass out of her hair with one hand while trying to rotate a kink out of the other.

"What about..?"

Medley shrugged. "Don't know."

A voice from behind them drew their attention and the pair stood—or attempted to, in Medley's case. "He's down. Looks like the crowd is starting to sort itself out. Police should be regrouping and pulling themselves together shortly. The unit that Cyborg found agreed to escort our culprit to a proper containment center," Raven explained.

"Kory?" Tim asked, looking around. As though summoned by his voice, the girl in question slammed into Tim from above and drove them both to the ground.

"TIM! You are not a greasy smear on the street!" Kory yelled, wrapping her arms around Tim in a bone-straining hug. "I am so glad I didn't hurt you!"

His face already starting to turn blue from lack of oxygen, Tim hugged the girl back before tapping on her back. "Air, Star," he choked out.

Turning away from the other two of her teammates, Raven gave Medley a once-over. "Your right arm is sprained and pulled nearly out of socket. The cut on your forehead is deep, but not serious. It doesn't look like the crystallization process reached it either, or we'd have noticed by now. And you're suffering power depletion. It looks like we've found your limit."

Medley nodded, idly flicking at the crystalized blood clinging to her face and scalp. "Food, sleep, and a shower and I'll be good in the morning. Where's everyone else?"

Raven gestured towards the entrance to the Vancouver building. "Coming down."

Again nodding, Medley's attention turned back to Tim and Kory. "Robin," she called softly to get his attention. Once she had it though, it seemed she couldn't manage to hold his gaze for more than a moment before turning away. "I froze... I'm—"

"Don't worry about it. You came through when it counted, that's what matters. You'll get better with time."

"Yes," Starfire added, "experience does not grow on trees, as you say."

"Uh... yeah, Star," Tim agreed.

"Still, I..." Medley started, but was cut off by the rest of the team's exit from the building.

"And so I said... hey, what are you guys doing down here?" Beast Boy asked, cutting himself off mid-sentence.

As the rest of the team caught up on the events that'd taken place during the battle, Medley followed along quietly, speaking only when asked direct questions, her mind running itself in circles about what could have and what should have taken place that night. The image of the old man nonchalantly walking away as Kory dropped Tim from a building under his orders stayed with her throughout. And above them, the woman put away her binoculars and sighed, glancing towards the Vancouver building.

"I really hope insurance covers repairs. This is not coming out of my pocket," she murmured, heading towards the service elevator.

* * *

Present Day... 

A figure garbed in white landed nimbly atop one of Jump City's buildings—impressive, concidering all he had to go by was the ambient light provided by the street lights below. Concidering who the figure was though, this scene was fairly commonplace. After taking a brief moment to enjoy the quiet and the brisk air, Savior trotted off to the opposite side of the building before launching himself from it. A Shimmer strand shot out, effortlessly finding a hold on a horizontal flagpole and propelling Savior past the second building and on to the next. Standing, he paused slightly as a muffled sound caught his ears before continuing on across the building as if nothing had happened. He was being followed, and he had a pretty good idea just who it was.

Reason told him that were he being pursued by hostile forces, he would have probably been attacked by now. Neither could it be any of the Titans—Tim and Nigel were on patrol in other parts of the city and the rest of the team was back at the tower. Besides, his pursuor was following on foot, atop the buildings behind him. He could really only expect this from four of the team: Robin, Scalpel, Gauntlet, or Cyborg. Robin, while known for doing just that, wouldn't have made the mistake of landing on a gravel covered rooftop and giving away his position, likewise for Scalpel. Gauntlet could have followed Savior's path or done a number of other things, but he would have made his presence known by now. Cy, while quite capable of jumping from roof to roof, was quite bulky and didn't like to waste energy doing it. Besides, he also weighed in at over four hundred pounds and was covered predominantly in metal and would have been far louder. No, his pursuor was light, fast, and had the potential but not the experience for stealth—someone who could, with time and practice, come down with no more than a whisper. That left only one person...

Halfway across the roof, Savior almost missed the sound of feet making contact with the other end of the roof. He did not, however, miss the quiet footsteps quickly approaching from behind. After waiting until his pursuor was nearly atop him, Savior spun and lashed out with the Shimmer, odd shapes reminiscent of fanged mouths surrounding and encircling the girl. They had the desired effect: she nearly jumped out of her skin in surprise. "You're too loud, and you follow too closely," Savior said, the sigh in his voice nearly audible. "What are you doing here Medley? I don't like excessive baggage."

Medley steeled her resolve. "Then help me not be baggage," she responded.

Shaking his head, Savior called back his power. "I can't teach you that." He turned to leave.

To her credit, Katie's resolve faltered only for a moment. "But you can show me," she said quietly as Savior continued to ignore her. Then she remembered why she was here... why she had followed perhaps the most withdrawn member of the Titans out into the night, intent on finding a way to stop the memories from haunting her nights and to keep the promise she'd made to herself not to let it happen again. Little did she know what exactly it was she was about to get herself into. Maybe, in the end, she would have been better off staying in bed—after all, she'd only seen the barest hint of the stuff real nightmares are made of. But the fact remains that she did not...

"_Never again... whatever it takes."_

Her resolve once again solidified, Medley hoped what she said next would convince him to stop. He _had_ to. "At least give me a chance to try!"

Maybe it was something in her voice, or maybe it was just the more tactically oriented part of Savior's mind seizing on an opportunity, or maybe it was something else entirely. He'd only managed to get two steps from her when he stopped, turning around to face the girl. "...I suppose I can," he said, the words cutting across the short distance and drawing half a smile from the girl's lips. "Then again, I suppose you could drink pure alcohol instead of beer to try and get drunk." The smile quickly reversed its course.

"No thanks," she said quickly, remembering her 'indoctrination' as a candidate for the team and the sick feeling she'd been left with afterwards. "...But this isn't like that, is it?"

"More often than you'd believe," he said, turning and walking a short distance away, his talent aiding his arms as he removed upper parts of his costume. "You have to understand Medley, most of what this life is portrayed as is a lie. It's a world where the bad never die and the good..." Here, he paused for effect as his shirt came over his head. He knew that even in the dim light, they would be visible: scars from countless encounters with even more things that had wanted him dead or worse. "Are much more fragile than you'd believe."

Medley's head turned away as she winched. "I'm... learning to deal with pain," she answered after a beat. _'After all, that's why I'm here,'_ she mentally added.

"You haven't even SEEN pain yet."

That was the only warning Medley got before the Shimmer slammed into her face with an audible WHACK, throwing her head back and drawing blood.

"First lesson: it's always where you least expect it from."

Almost of its own accord, her hand found the bleeding lip and wiped at the blood there. It was wet. Odd, she'd been expecting something else. "You..."

The white energy line came again, faster than she could track, this time connecting with her throat and sending her gasping to her knees. "Lesson two: shut up," Savior said, warming up to the subject. "Bad guys monologue and in that we live. We try it, we die."

Nodding, Medley found her breath and her feet...

"Don't protest anything in this life. There is no such thing as fairness." ...Only to have them pulled from under her as the Shimmer ripped up out of the ground, landing her on her face. How she managed not to break her nose or lose teeth, she'd never know. "Never."

Hands found their way under the girl as she pushed herself slowly back to her knees, then up the rest of the way to her feet, her power kicking in to compensate and keep her steady. "What about for them?" she asked, one hand waving out towards the city around them, indicating its inhabitants and beyond. "Isn't that why you do this? To give them that?"

Savior's chuckle startled her. It sounded so... old, beyond its time for someone his age. "Normal people don't know fairness. Normal people know selfishness."

THIS was why she had come here, what she had come looking for. Something she'd caught only a glimpse of after the confrontation with Drury Walker and his subsequent fall into Charaxes. "...Cold." It revolted her, yet something about it also drew her to it.

"That's life," Savior shrugged, before continuing. "Oh, it's not all bad. Getting awarded medals by the President is nice. But those moments are an exception. This life..." Once more, the Shimmer lashed out, catching the girl in the face yet again, emphasizing his point. "Is the rule."

Part of her wanted to turn and run from this cold before she was consumed by it, the other part desperately needed to embrace it and perhaps come to possess some of the strength of character Savior seemed to exude so effortlessly in doing so. Maybe then she would be able to go into battle without freezing up. ...Maybe then guilt and monsters would stop haunting her dreams. "Pain, coldness... our life, our rules?"

"Our life." An explosion in the distance caught his ears and his head turned towards the sound for a moment to follow it. "Their rules," he said, taking off at a run for the source of the disturbance.

Medley hadn't even seen him put his costume back on, but there it was, as she watched his jacket-clad form near the edge of the roof and jump off. To her credit, Katie hesitated only a moment... She would get nowhere being afraid to act. Or being afraid of the gifts she'd been given... Dual orange crests flared to life atop her forehead before fading out, then she took off after Savior, bounding across rooftops into the light of a Jump City night.

Neither of them took notice of the figure standing several roofs away, binoculars in hand and again surveying the city and its local metahuman talent. The binoculars came away from her face and found their way into one of the many pockets in the woman's red long coat as her other hand retrieved a P.D.A. like handheld device. She flipped it open and a small progress meter lit momentarily as it synced with the binoculars' internal memory. A second later, an image of both Savior and Medley appeared on the small screen. Next, she removed a cell phone from her pocket and punched in a command or two to the handheld, putting the phone to her ear and waiting for it to connect.

"Scabbard," a computer masked voice answered.

"Rapier. Sending data now."

* * *

Author's Notes: If this chapter seems a bit jumpy, it's because it is. It was originally parts of four other partial chapters. I think I managed to stitch them together rather well though, concidering. And this makes the sixth time I've tried to upload and edit this thing today alone. It sometimes refuses to recognize HR tags for some godforsaken reason. Doesn't even recognize them when you use open office to make them and upload as an open office document. grrrr. And I can't even edit at home. My computer is unstable at the moment. I think the bearings on my cpu fan are going out... Anyhow, I digress. It's been a while since I've updated. I suppose explanations/excuses are in order. First off, I was grounded... and still am. Have been since about mid-October. I have to do well on my finals before I can access the internet regularly again. Joy so effing hard. It's taking a lot longer to get to final time than I thought it would. My schedule lately goes something like this: wake up at seven, go to school till three, go to work at five, get to bed by midnight, lather, rinse, repeat. The good news is that I got to go visit my fiancee (she lives about halfway across the country from me) back in late December untill mid-January. More bad news: inspiration of the worst kind struck while I was there and I used some of my free time to write a poem agonizing over the lack of free time. I've decided to torture you by pasting it to the bottom of this. Feel free to skip it if you want to spare yourself the pain. Read it if you're a masochist or just want to laugh at me. And yes, I wrote this after reading a Mary-Sue alphabet post on godawful's forums and noticing that the 'K' section was missing... Apologies to the original author.

* * *

K is for Katelin 

naieve and sinciere

her past a blank slate

she shant remember.

Trapped is a godling in soul and in mind

for a contract verbal they both did sign.

The author's creativity fails to shine through

and he fears the readers shall beat him black and blue.

For though he has both zeal and zest,

time will tell if he stands up to the test,

of finishing a story, on time or ahead,

just as long as the poor thing doesn't end up dead.

And though he posesses both passion and flair,

he disappears for months on end, revealing neither hide nor hair.

To the story he's bound, and the tale must be told,

of why a godling would bond with the Katelin of old.

And so once again in hand I take pen,

though it's more like a keyboard crafted by more intelligent men,

than I for I've proven with this bought of verse,

that my writing is bound to only get worse.

So I close off this chapter with a Yuletide greeting,

from the home of my fiancee, whom I have looked forward to once again meeting,

Merry Christmas to you, though it nearly brings me to tears,

to report that I'm still grounded... 'till after New Years.

* * *

And with that, I think I'll go don my flame-proof bio-hazard suit. The next update will be faster than the last, probably... I've got parts of it written, I just need to string them together and tie in new stuff I'm working on now to flesh it out. Oh, and just to be a bastard, here's the short list of the things you missed because I decided to make partial chapters seven through ten into the finished version of chapter seven: a sparring match between Kate and Rob, a band of bank robbers looting the town, the introduction of at least three new semi-villians who may or may not show up later, a fight between Savior, Medley, and previoisly mentioned bank robbers which would have come at the end, more from the woman-in-red who calls herself Rapier, aaaand Katie dying. Thrice. Most of that will show up later though, hopefully... if I can ever figure out wtf is wrong with Urd (my (apparently aptly named) computer).

* * *

Current word count (since apparently ff dot net can't count): this chapter: 16915 (give or take a couple-dozen), not counting author's notes downward. Total: 79119, or so says open office. 


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